Current Research at ISERP
The Politics of Inequality: Neighborhood-level Allocations of Community Development Block Grant Money
by Justin Phillips (Political Science)
The largest federal program aimed at addressing urban inequality is the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG). Using a needs-based formula, the CDBG program awards approximately $4 billion annually to eligible communities. Congress requires that recipient governments use a substantial portion of their grant money for activities that are primarily redistributive in nature – in particular, activities that benefit low- and moderate-income neighborhoods and individuals. Because this program is a block grant, the extent to which CDBG money reaches its intended beneficiaries depends almost exclusively on implementation decisions made by elected officials at the local level.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that these decisions are often driven by political considerations rather than need, and rigorous quantitative analyses of municipal CDBG expenditures are absent from the existing literature. If local decisions are indeed a function of politics, this would call into question the redistributive potential of the CDBG program as well as other federal block grants. Furthermore, if voting or other forms of political influence are the means by which neighborhoods obtain CDBG money from local officials, the poor are likely to be particularly disadvantaged due to the wide and growing class gap in political participation.
This project investigates the conditions under which local elected officials will allocate CDBG money on the basis of need and when these decisions will be shaped by political considerations.
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Funded by Russell Sage Foundation »
