Territorial efficiency of social spending in Spain

Purpose - Regional disparities in social risk levels threaten social cohesion in Spain, which cannot be justified by the territorial differences in social spending per capita. These divergences may encourage and spread nationalist positions and populist discourses. The objective of this paper is to examine the efficiency of social policies (health, education and social protection) aimed at reducing the risk of exclusion across Spanish autonomous communities. Design/methodology/approach - The authors use data envelopment analysis (DEA) to compare each autonomous community. The analysis will determine whether the autonomies' resources (inputs or social spending in this case) are appropriately translated into goods and/or services (outputs or social cohesion), and which regions are more efficient in doing so. Findings - This work contributes to sustaining DEA analysis in the study of social policy efficiency, as it reveals the regions that have better adjustments between social investment and social results from a global perspective, as well as from the different intervention areas. The authors also provide a ranking of regions based on their relative efficiency, estimating a possible margin of improvement in the results. Originality/value - It is unusual to include the disaggregated analysis of social spending in efficiency studies using DEA at regional level. Therefore, this is an innovative analysis compared to most extended models that are mainly concerned with health or education expenditure, which are also considered in this study.