{"id":168907,"date":"2025-11-08T01:31:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T01:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/168907\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T01:31:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T01:31:10","slug":"eu-social-benefits-expenditure-up-7-in-2024-news-articles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/168907\/","title":{"rendered":"EU social benefits expenditure up 7% in 2024 – News articles"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2024, the total expenditure on social protection<\/a> benefits in the EU<\/a> reached \u20ac4 925 billion according to early estimates, a 6.9% increase compared with 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Data show that social protection benefits<\/a> expenditure represented 27.3% of the EU\u2019s GDP<\/a>, indicating a 0.6 percentage points<\/a> (pp) increase compared with the previous year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Among EU countries, social protection benefits expenditure as a percentage of GDP was highest in Finland (32.5% of GDP), France (31.9%) and Austria (31.8%), while it was lowest in Ireland (12.4%), Malta (13.4%) and Hungary (16.6%). \u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Expenditure<\/a><\/p>\n

Source dataset: spr_exp_func<\/a><\/p>\n

Among social protection benefits, old age<\/a> (\u20ac2 044 billion, 41.5% of the total) and sickness\/health care<\/a> (\u20ac1 463 billion, 29.7%) benefits represented the biggest expenditures. Other categories included disability<\/a>, survivors<\/a>, family\/children<\/a>,\u00a0unemployment<\/a>,\u00a0housing <\/a>and social exclusion not classified elsewhere<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2024, social protection benefits expenditure increased in all EU countries. The largest increases compared with 2023 were recorded in Estonia (+19.5%), Croatia (+17.8%) and Romania (+17.5%), while the smallest increases were registered in Greece (+3.2%), Sweden (+3.9%) and Italy and Denmark (each +4.3%).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Annual<\/p>\n

Source dataset: spr_exp_func<\/a><\/p>\n

This information comes from the early estimates<\/a> on social protection expenditure published recently by Eurostat. They cover the main indicators of the European System of Integrated Social Protection Statistics<\/a> (ESSPROS) and are provided by the reporting countries on a voluntary basis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2024, the total expenditure on social protection benefits in the EU reached \u20ac4 925 billion according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[79,5720,179,18,96790,19,17,5723,96789],"class_list":{"0":"post-168907","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-data-driven-news","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-epsr","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-population-and-social-conditions","16":"tag-spr"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115511498371359741","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}