The Canary Islands are the second community, after the Balearic Islands, where public spending on social welfare policies has increased the most from 2011 to 2022, after the cuts that all regions applied as a result of the 2008 recession, according to a report by the Federation of Applied Economics Studies (FEDEA).
Specifically, spending on these items has grown in the Canary Islands by 19.3%, more than double the national average (7.6%), but even so, the islands are still lagging behind in this area compared to the rest of Spain, since they allocate an annual budget that remains at 94% of what the rest of the autonomous communities spend, on average.
When going into detail on the different areas that make up social spending, the report places the Canary Islands at the head in increased effort in the period 2015-2022, with a real increase (discounting inflation) of 31.2% in total functional spending, 26.2% in Education and 29.5% in Health.
Likewise, the islands are the fourth community that has increased its disbursement in Social Protection the most in real terms, 53.8%.
Almost all autonomous communities have more than recovered the cuts in the Welfare State initiated in the first five years of the past decade as a consequence of the financial crisis, mainly thanks to the support of the State through extraordinary resources for the pandemic.
These are two of the main conclusions of the report released this Tuesday by Fedea on 'Spending on health, education and social protection in the CC.AA., 2015-2022', which indicates that total spending, without transfers between public administrations, has increased by 33.2% in nominal terms between 2015 and 2022.
Data from the entire State and region by region
It details that the increase in Welfare State spending has been distributed as follows: spending on health has increased by 40.6%, on education by 30.7% and on social protection by 53.8%.
In real terms, due to the high inflation rates recorded in recent years, the increases have been lower and total spending, discounting the rise in prices, has increased by 14.8%, in health by 21.2%, in education by 12.6% and in social protection by 32.5%.
By communities, it has increased in all of them, more in the Canary Islands, Navarra and the Valencian Community, and less in Extremadura, Asturias and Cantabria.
Looking at real spending on social welfare items between 2011 and 2022, it states that it has grown both in the country as a whole and in most of the regions and that, except in Castilla-La Mancha and Asturias, "the cuts in the welfare state initiated in the first five years of the past decade have been more than recovered."
The growths of Balearic Islands (23.7%), Canary Islands (19.3%) and Basque Country (15.7%) stand out, and on the opposite side, attention is drawn to the reduction in spending in Asturias (-4.5%) and Castilla-La Mancha (-10%) in the aforementioned period.
In this last case, it points out that this region has not yet recovered the 2011 level since it was the one that had adjusted spending the most between 2011 and 2014 -during the Government stage of María Dolores de Cospedal-, reducing it by almost 25% in real terms.
It also looks at the level of investment in the Welfare State per adjusted inhabitant and shows a notable difference between the different communities, with the Basque Country (125%) and Navarra (124%) at the front and Galicia (92%) and the Balearic Islands (93%) on the opposite side.
Overall, it points out, the autonomous communities have been the level of administration that has adjusted the deficit the most between 2015 and 2023 (0.8% of GDP).