A spatially sensitive approach to understanding the impact of public expenditure on social exclusion

Social welfare performance indicators do not consider the equity implications of gross and net public expenditure. That is,governments may spend money in a given area to achieve social outcomes but also tax the same community in ways which moderate the effectiveness of social programs. This paper reports on a project that aims to deploy geographical information systems (GIS) to investigate these processes. The equity implications of gross and net public expenditure are considered in a discussion of the development of a process to map the impact of public
expenditure on social exclusion.