Suburban Municipalities

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Abstract
The mid-1970s was a period of rapid expansion in intergovernmental aid. With this expansion, two major issues emerged. One concerned targeting—the extent to which these new monies went to communities with the most need. A second issue focused on the growing fiscal dependency of local governments on higher levels of government. In this article we investigate the distribution of intergovernmental aid across suburbs in the mid-1970s and identify types of suburbs that came to rely increasingly on transfer funds. The research shows that higher-income suburbs significantly increased the absolute levels of aid they received, but their reliance on aid did not increase dramatically. In contrast, suburban municipalities housing the growing number of black and low-income suburbanites became the most fiscally dependent during this time period. The implications of the growing fiscal dependency of large numbers of disadvantaged suburbs for the implementation of the New Federalism are discussed.

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