Yet surely what matters is what that money is spent on. The other EU countries have much higher pensions contribuitions as show in this (free) Economist article . Reading off the chart, Italy spends 13% of GDP on pensions, France and Germany 12%, and Spain 9%. The UK, with its poverty pension level, spends 5.5%.
If then you work out what proportion of GDP the government spends excluding pensions, the UK must spend a similar or in some cases more than those countries (although obviously one shold take account of payments that the UK has to make to pensioners to keep them from poverty such as income support).
posted by Matthew @ 8/03/2002 11:45:00 AM
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