The impact of government funding of poverty reduction programmes

This research evaluates the impacts on poverty rates of government funds for education, health and hospitals, and public welfare allocated to poverty reduction for counties with persistently high poverty in the Southern United States. Our analysis found that increases in education funding in a poverty hot-spot county reduce the poverty rates of that county and its neighbouring hot-spot counties. We also found that higher health and hospital funding in a hot-spot county is associated with higher poverty rates in neighbouring hot-spot counties and that public welfare funding is not effective in mitigating poverty either within or outside of poverty hot-spots.