Suchergebnisse

We study an Illinois state government program called "member initiative spending" and examine the extent to which three competing theories can explain the program's allocations among Illinois's 118 House districts. We show that member initiative monies distributed before the 2000 general election were disproportionately allocated to districts that were politically competitive, represented by legislative leaders, or represented by moderate legislators. Our analysis supports theories that claim budgetary decisions made by elected officials are tactical, and it shows that the Illinois decision makers who allocated member initiative funds sought to distribute them in a way that would be most beneficial in the sense of vote buying.

Why do we see persistence, recurrence, and new emergence of concentrated poverty in U.S. cities? In this article, we explore an understudied connection: whether an important part of the built environment—a series of attributes that constitute precarious housing—constitutes a durable substrate on which concentrated poverty predictably emerges and recurs and if so, how this might vary across the United States. Poverty grew fastest between 2000 and 2005–2009 in tracts that began the decade with high levels of rented one- to four-family housing, multifamily housing, housing between 20 and 25 years old, and households paying over 30% of their income for housing costs. In addition, poverty grew fastest in tracts with high percentages of black or Hispanic households in 2000.

A number of place-based policies attempt to deconcentrate poverty, yet not enough is known about how the socioeconomic mix of low-income neighborhoods evolves nor the role of residential mobility in this evolution. This study focuses on changes in low-income neighborhoods as they transpire at the micro level of housing unit turnover. Using a unique panel survey of low-income neighborhoods, the study examines how characteristics of previous occupants, housing units, and neighborhoods affect the chances that units will transition into or out of poverty. Results show that although turnover rates are high, the poverty status of occupants changes infrequently. Occupant, unit, and neighborhood factors help to explain the changes that do occur. Improving low-income neighborhoods is challenging because the poverty status of occupants tends not to change, but there are aspects of the built and social environment that can affect occupancy transitions in ways that reduce poverty concentration.