IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/pubmgr/v3y2001i1p19-34.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

SPATIAL EQUITY AND PUBLIC SERVICES: An empirical analysis of local government finance in England

Author

Listed:
  • George Boyne
  • Martin Powell
  • Rachel Ashworth

Abstract

In this article we develop and apply three normative criteria for evaluating the equity of the spatial distribution of local government finance. These are: service needs, as indicated by the characteristics of local population; rights, as measured by contributions to national and local taxes; and effort, which is the ratio of local taxes to incomes. We hypothesize that, in line with the Conservative governments' commitment to market criteria of equity in the 1980s and 1990s, the relationship between local spending and need became weaker while the relationship with rights and effort became stronger. The results of an empirical analysis of the spatial equity of expenditures in England are not consistent with this expectation. The dominant criterion of equity in local government finance between 1981 and 1996 was service need, rather than rights or effort. The evidence suggests that those areas which need more local spending get more, those which pay more get less and those which try harder get little reward for their efforts.

Suggested Citation

  • George Boyne & Martin Powell & Rachel Ashworth, 2001. "SPATIAL EQUITY AND PUBLIC SERVICES: An empirical analysis of local government finance in England," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 19-34, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:pubmgr:v:3:y:2001:i:1:p:19-34
    DOI: 10.1080/14719030122423
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14719030122423
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/14719030122423?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. João Lourenço Marques & Jan Wolf & Fillipe Feitosa, 2021. "Accessibility to primary schools in Portugal: a case of spatial inequity?," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(3), pages 693-707, June.
    2. Zhenbao Wang & Dong Liu & Shihao Li & Shuyue Liu & Huiqing Li & Ning Chen, 2023. "Analyzing the Impact of Decreasing Out-of-Vehicle Time of Public Transportation Travel on Accessibility to Tertiary Hospitals," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(16), pages 1-20, August.
    3. Wenxin Liu & Minjuan Zhao & Wei Hu & Yu Cai, 2018. "Spatial‐temporal variations of water poverty in rural China considered through the KDE and ESDA models," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(4), pages 254-268, November.
    4. Liu Wenxin & Zhang Yao & Xu Ruifan & Zhang Zhen, 2022. "Water shortage risk evaluation and its primary cause: Empirical evidence from rural China," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(2), pages 179-199, May.
    5. Yasna Cortés, 2021. "Spatial Accessibility to Local Public Services in an Unequal Place: An Analysis from Patterns of Residential Segregation in the Metropolitan Area of Santiago, Chile," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-20, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:pubmgr:v:3:y:2001:i:1:p:19-34. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RPXM20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.