Poverty and Place across the United States Do County Governments Matter to the Distribution of Economic Disparities?

Many researchers advocate active local government responses to poverty and other economic disparities. In doing so, they raise a generally unexplored question: can local governments themselves influence poverty net of other determinants? This study extends past research in two ways by (1) analyzing...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational regional science review Vol. 35; no. 2; pp. 158 - 187
Main Authors Lobao, Linda, Jeanty, P. Wilner, Partridge, Mark, Kraybill, David
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.04.2012
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects
Counties
County government
Determinants
Economic analysis
Economic development
Economic growth
Economic inequality
Economic policy
Economics
Households
Income
Income distribution
Income inequality
Local government
Poverty
Standard of living
Studies
U.S.A
United States
United States > US
urban and regional issues
economic analysis
methods
economic growth and development
generalized moments estimation (GMM)
income distribution
spatial dependence
policy and applications
regional econometric models
income inequality
social and political issues
generalized spatial two-stage least squares
poverty
other policy and applications
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Summary:Many researchers advocate active local government responses to poverty and other economic disparities. In doing so, they raise a generally unexplored question: can local governments themselves influence poverty net of other determinants? This study extends past research in two ways by (1) analyzing the poverty-reducing role of county governments and (2) evaluating new relationships pertaining to the comparative influence of government capacity and specific policies. The authors assess the degree to which county government capacity and economic development policies relate to disparities in job growth, individual and child poverty, and household income. The empirical analysis is based on a unique set of primary and secondary data on county governments for the post-2000 period. County government capacity as measured by county centralization and autonomy from upper-level government is related to economic growth and poverty reduction. By contrast, policy variables have little consistent association with economic disparities.
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ISSN:0160-0176
1552-6925
DOI:10.1177/0160017611435356