Place-Based Aid Versus People-Based Aid and the Role of an Urban Audit in a New Urban Strategy
25 Pages Posted: 5 Apr 1999
Abstract
Cities with relatively high poverty rates remain high-cost places in which to live and work, even with hundreds of billions of dollars in means-tested monetary and in-kind transfers flowing annually to their poorer residents. Consequently, place-based aid to jurisdictions is needed to eliminate the cost differential between central cities and many of their suburbs that firms and middle-class households correctly perceive when they make location decisions. An Urban Audit is needed to provide estimates of how much aid is required to equalize poverty-related costs of various public services across jurisdictions and to provide localities incentives to employ the funds efficiently.
JEL Classification: H72, H79
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation