Thus, in cases where public spending on health declined or stagnated, it was because the sector was used to tighten the budget. The cuts did not affect current spending (such as payroll or supplies) so much as the investment component (construction and maintenance of hospitals and clinics, purchases of new technology, etc.). These regional declines occurred even as total public spending held steady or grew, with health spending shrinking as a share of total spending on several occasions (that is, its fiscal priority diminishing). These declines were not fundamentally associated with reductions in social public spending, which means that health spending as a share of social spending lost significant ground even, in some cases, as other types of social spending, such as education and social security, rose (see figure 16).