The government fails to fund nonprofit human services in poor, African American neighborhoods

Much of the social safety net in the United States relies on partnerships between the service-providing non-profit organizations and the government, which funds those organizations serving high poverty areas. Eve Garrow examines how effective these partnerships are in serving impoverished neighborhoods, and finds that greater levels of neighborhood poverty improve the chances that nonprofit human services located in them will receive government funding—unless those neighborhoods are substantially African American. Based on these findings, she argues that the privatized welfare state may underserve neighborhoods where the need is greatest.