Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Previous research has exemplified how federalism can have an adverse effect on ethnic minorities, particularly African Americans. The decentralization of the United States’ government and the devolution of public policy has led to various inequitable policy designs and implementation for African Americans. While decentralization and devolution can allow lower-level governments the ability to curtail public policies to the specific needs of its varying constituents, decentralization can also enable the type of autonomy that implicitly embeds the racial attitudes of policy actors into policy design and implementation.

I am interested in how the inequitable treatment of African Americans through racially inequitable policy design and implementation is maintained through the federalist system of the government in the United States. Using Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Social Security data from all 50 states, this study will explore the connection between federalism, devolution, and policy design and implementation by comparing a decentralized policy design (i.e., Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) with a centralized policy design (i.e., Social Security Disability). Specifically, this study will focus on the racial variation in the eligibility of TANF and Social Security Disability recipients. This study will also highlight the racial differences in sanction outcomes.

As it relates to TANF, research has shown that states with a larger proportion of African Americans on welfare on average have more punitive policy designs and implementation outcomes. In states with majority African American caseloads, the state’s welfare recipients receive fewer cash benefits and are more likely to be sanctioned compared to states where whites make up a larger proportion of the welfare caseload. I hypothesize that the decentralized policy (TANF) compared to the centralized policy (Social Security Disability) would result in more stringent eligibility criteria and more punitive sanction outcomes especially in states that have a higher proportion of African Americans on its welfare caseloads.