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Government Expenditures and Public Services in the American States*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Ira Sharkansky
Ira Sharkansky*
Affiliation:
The University of Georgia
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Extract

Much recent policy analysis is based on the assumption that the amount of money spent in a jurisdiction indicates the nature of services provided. This study seeks to test this assumption as it applies to the American states.

Among the studies that have attempted to explain the “outputs” of state and local governments by reference to political and economic characteristics, several have identified expenditures with services implicitly by mixing indicators of spending with indicators of services as the “outputs” to be explained. Other studies have claimed explicitly that government expenditures reflect the “scope and character” or “calibre” or the “alpha and the omega” of public services. A contrary argument is that “money is not everything.” Such nonmonetary factors as the quality of personnel or the nature of the political environment may exert the greatest influences upon the quality or quantity of public services within a jurisdiction.

In assessing the relationship between spending and services, this study first defines static relationships between measures of spending and measures of public services. Secondly, it examines relationships over time in an attempt to discern if increases in government expenditures are likely to bring about increases in the quality or quantity of public services.

Type
Research Notes
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 61 , Issue 4 , December 1967 , pp. 1066 - 1077
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1967

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Footnotes

*

Grants from the Social Science Research Council and the University of Georgia Office of General Research provided funds to support this research.

References

1 Dawson, Richard and Robinson, James, “Interparty Competition, Economic Variables, and Welfare Policies in the American States,” Journal of Politics, 25 (05, 1963), 265–289CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dye, Thomas R., “Malapportionment and Public Policy in the States,” Journal of Politics, 27 (08, 1965), 586–601CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richard I. Hofferbert, “The Relations between Public Policy and Some Structural and Environmental Variables in the American States,” this Review, 60 (March, 1966) 73–82.

2 See, respectively, Wood, Robert C., 1400 Governments (Garden City, 1961), p. 35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burkhead, Jesse, Public School Finance (Syracuse, 1965) p. 50Google Scholar; and Burch, Phillip C., Highway Revenue and Expenditure Policy in the United States (New Brunswick, 1962), p. 34.Google Scholar

3 Grodzins, Morton, “American Political Parties and the American System,” Western Political Quarterly, 13 (12, 1960), 974–998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 “General expenditures” in clude all state spending for each major category except for insurance trust funds. The year 1962 was selected for all variables because of the data in the Census of Governments, 1962.

5 See Maxwell, James A., Financing State and Local Governments (Washington, 1965), Chapter 2.Google Scholar

6 Variables considered, but not retained were: percentage of per capita personal income paid in taxes to state and local governments; percentage of state and local general revenue originating at the state level prior to intergovernmental transfers; percentage of state and local general revenue allocated to the state level after tax collections and intergovernmental transfers; percentage of local general revenue received from the state; voter turnout in state elections; the David-Eisenberg measure of apportionment equity in state legislatures; a measure of party competition derived from Ranney's index of Democratic party strength; number of local governments per 10,000 population; percentage of population living in urban areas; percentage of labor force employed in manufacturing; and value added by manufacturing, per capita. Variables 2–4 of this list were dropped because they reflect the same phenomena as independent variable g. Variables 1, 5–8 were dropped because they fail to show strong relationships with either government expenditures or public services. Variables 9–11 were dropped because they reflect the same phenomena as in dependent variables h and i.

7 Beside the state government, the principal non-local source of state-local revenue is the federal government. A high score on variable g indicates centralization because most federal contributions to local governments funnel through state agencies.

8 See Perloff, Harvey S.et al, Regions, Resources and Economic Growth (Baltimore, 1960), Chapters 1–3.Google Scholar

9 For an illustration of this technique, see Dye, op. cit. Also see Blalock, Hubert, Social Statistics (New York, 1960), Chapter 19.Google Scholar

10 Because the 48 states are not a random sample, the common tests for significance are not, strictly speaking applicable. They will be used, however, to provide an arbitrary indication of relationships that appear “sizable.”