增长、就业与社会支出——关于社会政策的“常识”与反“常识”

Growth,Employment and Social Spending:Rethinking the conventional wisdom on social policy

经济发展和社会政策的关系在学界和公共平台一直争论不休。主流观点认为,社会政策汲取的税收会扭曲市场激励机制,而且通过提供慷慨的保障弱化了劳动者的工作动机,进而对就业产生负面影响。此外,社会支出具有刚性,难以控制。本文回顾了国内外现有的理论和经验研究,分析了社会政策与经济发展、社会保护与就业的关系,以及社会支出是否可控三个议题,从而否定了社会政策是短视国策的看法。历经30多年高速增长的中国,财富与矛盾都在积聚,未来的发展和稳定不可能继续依赖海量的投资和不稳定的外部需求。通过系统化的社会保护体制建设,将社会保障视为一种投资而非纯粹的耗费,中国可望走向更具韧性和更为人性的稳定状态。

There are hot debates on the relationship between economic growth and social policy.Some conventional wisdom contends that social programs not only extract too many resources and distort market incentive mechanisms,but also undermine the work incentives of workers and harm employment.Besides,social spending is too rigid to control.This article reviews the existing theoretical and empirical studies,and reanalyzes the relationships among social policy,economic growth and employment,and furthermore,the controllability of social spending.The author argues that social policy is not a short-sighted policy,but has several positive externalities.During the past three decades of high speed growth,China has been accumulating wealth and social conflicts simultaneously.In order to achieve sustainable development and social stability,policy makers should consider adding welfare as the third driver of socioeconomic development,rather than relying on huge investment and instable external demand.Through systematic construction of social protection,China is expected to transform the rigid,coercive stability maintaining system into a resilient and humane stability maintaining system.