Social Needs, Political Representation, and Federal Outlays in the East North Central United States of America

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The objectives of this paper are first, to examine whether the distribution of federal outlays in the USA are responsive to variation in social needs, and second, to establish whether areas with political representatives on key Congressional committees receive higher levels of federal outlays than might be expected given their needs and resources. The study region is the East North Central region, the observation units are counties, and the outlays examined are for the Departments of Agriculture, and Health, Education and Welfare (to investigate the effects of political representatives), as well as total outlay levels (for evaluating responsiveness to social needs). The study's conclusions are that total outlays are poorly related to social needs, although outlays for specific departments (Agriculture and Health, Education and Welfare) are strongly related, and that political representation has little impact on the distribution of Agriculture, and Health, Education and Welfare outlays in the study area.