An example of social construction is money. In reference to my topic of social welfare, I will talk about social welfare spending. Social welfare spending deals with programs that support low income households.

These programs include health initiatives such as Medicaid and state child health insurance programs (SCHIP); cash assistance programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) or cash payments under AFDC’s replacement, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF); and a wide variety of other service programs providing child care, foster care, low-income energy assistance, services to the homeless and those funded by the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG).

I believe that states of less fiscal capacity spent less per capita spend less on social welfare than states of higher fiscal capacity. Medicaid for example spending grew rapidly among all states in the late 1980s and early 1990s, even after controlling for the high rates of inflation in health care services. But the strongest growth occurred among the poorest states, probably a consequence in part of federal Medicaid expansions in eligible populations, services, and special funding for health care providers during those years.

A flurry of policymaking around AFDC waivers and TANF cash assistance occurred in these and many other states in the middle and late 1990s. By 2003, however, TANF and its policies drew little attention from legislators in these six states and changes in earned income disregards, maximum benefits, time limits, and sanction policies had changed little since the late 1990s. For example, maximum benefit levels for AFDC and TANF assistance had changed only once or twice in most of the six states during the last 20 years. Debates over these policies also seemed more ideologically and racially charged than most other social policy questions.

As a result, decisions in poor states about what programs to support were often delegated to and controlled by state administrators rather than legislators and governors. Decisions were often made on the basis of state administrators’ assessments about the relative merits of different programs and their centrality in achieving major goals. However, though administrators had some control over which programs grew and which were cut, they had little control over general fiscal constraints, and these changing constraints often dominated recent budgetary processes for this group of programs.