Volatility and Change in Suburban Nonprofit Safety Nets

Abstract

Rising poverty in suburbs has led to increased interest in how well suburban safety nets function. Apart from public assistance programs, community-based nonprofit health and human service organizations play a central role in suburban efforts to address racial and economic inequalities. Understanding how nonprofit services are distributed across the suburban and urban landscape, therefore, is critical to assessing how communities may be able to address need. In this paper, we examine the presence and volatility of nonprofit health and human service expenditures in suburban and urban counties across the United States from 2000 to 2017. We find the nonprofit safety net to be more responsive in urban centers than in suburban places, and less robust in suburban areas experiencing high rates of poverty or with a larger share of residents who are Black. Nonprofit health and human service spending also appears less countercyclical than is commonly understood. Suburban-urban disparities in nonprofit health and human service spending persist after controlling for several county-level demographic and socioeconomic factors.