Framing the Social Safety Net: How Equity Emerges in Policy Processes

• In Event: Legislative Behavior across the United States

Abstract

Though many social policies have significant implications for racial and other forms of equity, some of those policies are framed explicitly in relation to equity, while others are not (Niederdeppe et al., 2023). In the context of enduringly salient political contestation over ideas related to notions like “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” choices about whether to frame policy in terms of equity are strategic, and they likely have repercussions within policy processes. This paper explores how US state lawmakers incorporate equity into the design and language of social policies, focusing on the Child Tax Credit (CTC). Through content analyses of bill texts and congressional records, we assess whether US policymakers frame state safety net policies as tools to reduce disparities or address equity. We focus particularly (though not exclusively) on health equity, with an eye toward understanding whether, when, and how equity and related ideas (e.g., disparities) are incorporated into the design or language of social policies.

The CTC is an especially useful case for investigating how equity is articulated in policy processes. For example, the short-lived expansion of the CTC enacted via the American Rescue Plan Act reduced child poverty to the lowest rate ever recorded. What’s more is that this poverty reduction was distinctly beneficial to families of color, reducing the Black child poverty rate by 6.3 percentage points (lifting 716,000 Black children out of poverty) and lowering the poverty rate for Latinx children by 6.3 percentage points (pulling 1.2 million Latinx children out of poverty). Though the federal government has (thus far) declined to make the temporary expansion of the CTC during the pandemic more permanent, many states have worked (before and after the pandemic) to develop or expand their own CTC programs. Given widespread research and public discussion of the benefits of the CTC for both racial equity and health equity (Batra, Jackson, and Hamad, 2023), it is an apt time to explore whether and how equity considerations find their way into policy discourse.

This paper offers a descriptive policy analysis of state-level Child Tax Credit legislation. Drawing on multiple databases, we identify dozens of CTC bills proposed, enacted, rejected, and vetoed between 2018 and 2023. We also draw on legislative records in a subset of jurisdictions to examine state lawmakers’ discussion of these bills. Our preliminary analysis reveals three different categories of CTC bills related to equity. A small percentage explicitly sought to advance equity using a race-conscious approach. A larger percentage of bills were not exclusively framed around equity but referenced the equity-promoting effects of policy. Finally, most CTC bills did not reference equity at all. After sorting bills into these categories, we offer a broad assessment of the conditions associated with policymakers’ choices about how and whether to frame policy in terms of equity. Specifically, we consider how state political and demographic contexts covary with equity framing choices.

This work has implications for understanding how concerns around equity emerge in the political process, broadly illuminating the implications of salient divisions over “DEI” for the state-level policy processes that facilitate the safety-net policies necessary for the health and well-being of racially and economically marginalized populations.

Authors

• Sarah Denise Rozenblum, Cornell University

• Jamila D. Michener, Cornell University