Whose Need Matters?: Extending Welfare State Theory to U.S. Counties' Variation in Welfare Service Provisioning

• In Event: 4132 - Neoliberal Welfare States: Substantive and Theoretical Issues

Abstract

Research has long considered the relationship between the welfare state and poverty, yet most studies center on national/cross-national relationships with little research aimed at the subnational scale. This spatial gap has been referred to sociology's "missing middle" and is evident in that welfare state research rarely scrutinizes the social welfare provisions of local governments across the nation. Yet there is growing evidence that devolution of welfare services from federal to state and local governments has produced unequal, and sometimes discriminatory, provisioning of welfare services. The goal of this paper is to address two research questions: (1) How are local governments' provisioning of social services affected by local racial/ethnicity and gender relations, economic conditions, and institutional arrangements? (2) How does local social service provisioning vary according to which social group within a community is in need? Conceptually, I place the welfare state literature in dialogue with spatial inequality literature that deals with poverty overall and how it varies by race/ethnicity and gender. I utilize unique nationally representative primary data collected on county governments (N>1,700) that documents the variety of welfare service programs employed by these governments to address communities' need. The data allows for greater generalizability about the range of local welfare services provided than nearly all past studies. I find that county governments' welfare services are related to aggregate need of people in the community as measured as poverty rate: in localities where poverty is higher, counties provided a greater number of social services. However, governments' provisioning varies when need is disaggregated among social groups by race/ethnicity and gender. A unique finding is that county governments respond significantly more to white poverty than to the poverty experienced by African American or Hispanic residents. This study showcases possible means by which unequal patterns of welfare support emerge, as well as reveal the role of subnational states in perpetuating inequalities among social groups.

Author

• Paige Kelly, The Ohio State University