Citizens perceptions of public spending in Spain 1993-2019

[Description of methods used for collection/generation of data] Public opinion surveys have been conducted by the Center for Sociological Research, a public body dependent on the Ministry of Presidency. The questionnaire is applied to a random sample of people living in Spain at the time of the survey. Sample size is close to 2.400 cases. Recall that this is not panel data. The database has been built merging yearly surveys carried out with the same questions in different years and using different random samples. Macro level economic data: Data relating to public expenditure in different areas or functions have been obtained, in current terms (euros for each year) and absolute terms, from both official budgetary statistics at state and regional level. Specifically, expenditure on defence, security, pensions and other economic benefits, unemployment protection expenditure and infrastructure, from the Secretary of State for Budgets and Expenditure (2005, 2019). For spending on health and education, and given that, in the case of Spain, these powers underwent a gradual process of decentralisation until 2002, the state and regional series have been linked for the years in which spending was divided between the two levels of government during the period considered, 1996-2018. Health and education expenditure has been obtained from the Secretary of State for Budgets and Expenditure (2005, 2019), Budgets, Public Accounts and Financing Systems (2019). The source for deflating the data (dividing the data in current terms by the consumer price index for each year and expressing it in constant 2011 terms) and per inhabitant or per capita (dividing it by the total population of Spain) is the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
There are some expenditure items which need further explanation. As regards defence policy, it is important to consider that in addition to the programmes through which this policy is developed, there are others belonging to other policies which involve defence spending (Pérez-Muinelo, 2009). The amounts allocated to such programmes have been added to the amounts initially allocated in the General State Budgets to defence policy, in order to arrive at a figure which more closely reflects their real value. For infrastructure policy, we are aware that using data which reflect programmed instead of actual expenditure –which results from our aim to make the expenditure series homogeneous, comparable and covering the longest possible time period – could lead to an ‘underestimation’ of this element of expenditure. However, we believe that it nonetheless remains broadly representative of public works expenditure at national level ((footnote, page 11 of the article).

• Science and technology
• Economy
• Society and welfare

• From 1993-01-01 to 2019-12-31

• https://www.cis.es/

Recommended citation : Pino, Eloísa del; Calzada, Inés; Murillo, Encarnación; 2025; Citizens perceptions of public spending in Spain 1993-2019 [Dataset]; DIGITAL.CSIC; DOI