Explaining Welfare Benefits in the South: A Regional Analysis

Abstract

<jats:p>This paper examines the choices made by states in the implementation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Commonly known as TANF, the legislation gives states substantial control over the choices of benefits and sanctions they impose on program recipients. Using the models and theoretical explanations offered by Soss et al. (2001) and tested in a 49-state model, we test the degree to which these explanations hold when applied to a regional analysis of southern states. We find that the southern states are similar to the rest of the country when it comes to setting TANF benefit choices, although social control explanations are more important for southern states than for the rest of the nation.</jats:p>

Explaining State Differences in the Implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: A South/Non‐South Comparison*

“…Previous work by Breaux et al. (), Breaux, Morris, and Travis (), and Bass and De Vries (1976) has detected regional policy differences, although the differences are slight.…”

“…Prior state comparative literature suggests a state's political environment is influenced greatly by citizen ideology, and can often predict state policy decisions (Kim, Powell, and Fording, ; Breaux, Morris, and Travis, ; Soss et al., ; Grogan, ; Berry and Berry, ; Hill, Leighley, and Hinton‐Anderson, ). Citizen ideology is based on voter candidate preference of both winning and losing candidates in congressional elections (Berry et al., ).…”

“…The purposes of this article are to analyze a variety of explanations offered for the varying responses of the states to the PPACA and to determine whether the responses of southern states differ from those of non‐South states. Is it the case that the policy responses of southern states remain distinct from those of other states (see McDowell et al., ; Breaux et al., ), or is it the case that southern distinctiveness in policy is in decline (Breaux, Morris, and Travis, ; Greentree et al., )? Research into different policy arenas in the past 15 years seems to indicate a “mixed bag” of results, yet most of the existing work also examines policy arenas in which policy decisions are made over a long period of time.…”

Reconsidering State Variation in Incarceration Rates

“…The extant literature suggests the prevailing political ideology of a state's citizens can often predict state policy decisions (Berry and Berry 1992; Breaux, Morris, and Travis 2007; Grogan 1994; Hill, Leighley, and Hinton‐Andersson 1995; Kim, Powell, and Fording 2010; Ouellette 2018; Soss et al . 2001) .…”

“…2019. "Social Control Meets New Public Management: Examining the Diffusion of State Prison Privatization, 1979-2010: 506-544. https://doi.org/10.1111/ polp.12309 Morris, John C. 2007. "Government and Market Pathologies of Privatization: The Case of Prison Privatization."…”