Block Grants and the Welfare State

We propose to write a fuller proposal that will take a fresh, comprehensive examination of these issues. We describe a three-part project: (1) a lengthy descriptive analysis of state spending on TANF, Medicaid, and SSI and other welfare programs over the last 20 or 30 years, breaking down spending into detailed components; (2) a cross-state, over-time econometric analysis examining how state economic and social characteristics, political organization, and financing method (matching, block, etc.) affect state spending choices; and (3) an analysis of the implications of the empirical results for some of the block grant mechanisms currently being discussed.