Huh. Iceland and Korea spend the least % of GDP on social programs in the OECD

[Recursion]

https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SOCX_AGG

Well, them and Estonia, but I don't know much about Estonia.

The highest GDP % spent on social programs are France and Finland.

The US spends a greater percent of GDP on social programs than Canada, but much less than Greece. While Greece spends less than Germany.

[GummyBearz]

1. Some amazing insights in this post

I would read it again.

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. Percentages are meaningless

Germany's GDP is 16 times that of Greece. Germany can spend a lower percentage of GDP on social programmes while still spending more per capita on social programmes. The dataset you want to be looking at is this: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SOCX_AGG (per capita in constant dollars at purchasing power parity).

[Recursion]

3. Well, no, we'd expect richer countries to spend more in absolute terms

Comparing percentage of GDP is pretty useful in that sense, and for that matter when you have per-capita GDP that gives you per-capita social spending right out of that.

Note that your measurement still has Iceland well towards the bottom (though it has leapfrogged countries like Mexico and New Zealand), though Greece has fallen to next to Iceland (and is still far below Germany).

"Net" spending (including tax credits and private charities) is also an interesting tab to look at, and shows the troubling extent to which the US depends on both of those.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. It's percentage of GDP, so there's a large per capita effect anyway

The point is that, using those 2 countries, Germany spent 25.8% of its GDP in 2014, while Greece spent 24.0%.

Your link is the same as the OP, because it goes to a frame window, but while he was (I think) looking at the 'social expenditure (SOCX)' data (top of the list in the left hand pane), you appear to be talking about the 'Public and Private Social Expenditure by country' data (2nd in list), which appears country by country. But that only goes up to 2011, and you have to look at each country separately, while 'SOCX' gives the total for each country, and up to 2014, so you can easily compare them.