Despite very different beginnings, China and America now have a great deal in common in how social policy provision is organized

At the beginning of the latter half of the 20th century, policy approaches in China and the US to providing social benefits, such as education and health care, were very different. China's model was one of centralized control, while in the US a state-based approach to implementing social policies was favored. In new research, Daniel Béland, Philip Rocco, Shih-Jiunn Shi and Alex Waddan compare how the provision of social policy in China and the US has evolved. They find that both countries have converged to a point where the central government formulates and (in the US case, pays for) social policy while states and provinces play a major role in how those policies are implemented.