How Economic Cycles Affect State Social Policy Development

This article tests a hypothesis about the existence of a correlation between rates of economic growth and rates of public social spending in OECD countries and a range of transition economies. The paper argues that an economy does not necessarily react to fluctuations in business cycles with rises/falls in social spending in the mid term; however, significant fluctuations in the long term may occur during postsocialist transitions. Also, a long-term prognosis of state social policy development in Russia is presented based on OECD countries and developmental regularities of transition economies