Local administration isn’t uniform, results in less uptake and reinforces inequality
Sarah K. Bruch et al 22, associate professor in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration and the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. Janet C. Gornick is a professor of political science and sociology, director of the Stone Center on Socio- Economic Inequality, and the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Distinguished Chair in Socio- Economic Inequality at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. Joseph van der Naald is a PhD candidate in the sociology program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. "Geographic Inequality in Social Provision: Variation across the US States" Measuring Distribution and Mobility of Income and Wealth, Chapter 16. //pipk
The decentralized nature of the social safety net for economically vulnerable families with children is one of the most important structural features of the US welfare state. Our research establishes that the extent of crossstate variation in the generosity and inclusiveness of safety net provision is extensive, thus constituting a crucial form of inequality— inequality in the treatment of similar needs and claims by people who happen to live in different states.
We argue that this form of inequality deserves more sustained attention, particularly with regard to policy design and reform. In designing social policies, there is a clear trade- off between uniformity through national provision, reflective of equality in social rights and equity considerations, and variability through state or local provision, indicating substantial inequality in rights and a lack of centralized effort aimed at equity in provision (Obinger, Castles, and Leibfried 2005). As Aaron Wildavsky (1985) famously noted, “federalism means inequality”— and our work confirms that.
While more research is needed, the findings we present in this chapter demonstrate that the United States’ decentralized safety net leads to crossstate inequalities in public supports for citizens with similar needs. That is an important finding, because this policy variation is associated with states’ racial and ethnic composition, such that social policies reflect and reinforce localized structures of inequality. The implications of policy decentralization for the patterning of racial inequality in the US are most visible, as we have shown, in the disparity between the two programs that we examined closely: TANF and SSI.
One of our key conclusions is that, among programs that operate with greater levels of state discretion, states with a higher proportion of Blacks and historically marginalized populations provide lesser benefits and serve fewer needy individuals. That is, while program design provides all states the same degree of discretion, that discretion is used in ways that reflect the state’s racial composition. As we noted earlier, links between states’ social provision and their racial and ethnic composition are complex. Our motivating concern was that correlations between policy features and racial and ethnic composition might lead to an insidious form of disparity: Blacks and members of other marginalized populations, due to their patterns of residential location, may receive less generous and less inclusive social protection. Our empirical results support that conclusion.
When analyzing potential improvements to the US safety net, it is crucial that we better understand the role of state and local policymakers and administrators, as well as the equalizing role that the federal government and/or more uniform policy designs can play in ensuring equal protection and rights. Both of these analytic perspectives are increasingly pressing; the effects of the COVID- 19 pandemic, and the concurrent economic and social crises, have already revealed familiar patterns of racial inequality, with respect to both health outcomes and economic insecurity (Gould and Wilson 2020).