ABSTRACT

This paper looks at whether fiscal decentralization of welfare programs made state governments effective at alleviating poverty. We make use of the National Association of State Budget Officers’ (NASBO) State Expenditure Report which publishes expenditure data in different areas by state and federal government. Using this data, we constructed expenditure ratios to demonstrate the moment when state governments took on more responsibility in funding compared to the federal government. Although we hypothesized fiscal decentralization to worsen poverty growth, we found the fiscal decentralization of Medicaid to reduce poverty rate growth. We believe this negative finding to be the result of the types of additional goods that are being offered to Medicaid beneficiaries beyond what is federally required.

摘要

本文着眼于福利计划的财政分权是否使州政府能够有效地减轻贫困。我们利用全国州预算官员协会 (NASBO) 的州支出报告，该报告发布了州和联邦政府在不同领域的支出数据。利用这些数据，我们构建了支出比率，以展示州政府比联邦政府承担更多融资责任的时刻。尽管我们假设财政分权会加剧贫困增长，但我们发现医疗补助的财政分权会降低贫困率增长。我们认为这一负面结果是由于向医疗补助受益人提供的额外商品类型超出了联邦政府的要求。