The Spending-Service Connection |
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| Authors: | David R. Morgan James T. LaPlant |
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| Affiliation: | James T. LaPlant is assistant professor of political science at Valdosta State University. His research interests include intergovernmental relations, mass political behavior, and American political institutions. His dissertation focuses on racial differences in adolescent political socialization.;David R. Morgan is a professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma. His work on state and urban politics has appeared in a number of journals. The fourth edition of his book. Managing Urban America;, co-authored with Robert England, was published by Chatham House in 1996. |
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| Abstract: | This research tests the relationship between state and local spending for health and hospitals, a set of health service measures, and three final policy outcomes—low birthweight infants, infant mortality, and child deaths. The analysis includes several proxies for service demand—state resources, percentage of single-teen births, and percentage of the population without health insurance. The multiple regression equations also incorporate a measure of federal spending on health and an indicator of state spending for Medicaid. This first stage of the analysis can account for only a limited amount of variation in per capita state and local health and hospital spending. Health expenditures, however, are prominently related to health workers per 10,000 population, while hospital spending buys hospital beds. The final step in the analysis uses path models. The results show that neither spending nor the intermediate-level health outputs (including a measure of prenatal care) are significantly related to the final three outcome variables. Single-teen births is the dominant influence in the final equations. |
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