Poverty and Place across the United States

Linda Lobao, P. Wilner Jeanty (), Mark Partridge and David Kraybill

International Regional Science Review, 2012, vol. 35, issue 2, 158-187

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: poverty; income distribution; income inequality; social and political issues; policy and applications; economic growth and development; urban and regional issues; regional econometric models; economic analysis; methods; other policy and applications; spatial dependence; generalized spatial two-stage least squares; generalized moments estimation (GMM) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:inrsre:v:35:y:2012:i:2:p:158-187

DOI: 10.1177/0160017611435356

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