Racial Inequality in Access to the Nonprofit Safety Net: County-Level Racial and Ethnic Composition and Nonprofit Human Services Expenditures

Abstract Nonprofit organizations are a central part of the American human services safety net, yet access to their services may be unequally distributed across communities. This paper examines racial and ethnic disparities in nonprofit human services expenditures at the county level in the United States. Using national administrative data from all U.S. counties in 2017 on nonprofit expenditures aggregated to the county level, I use Ordinary Least Squares regression to analyze how county racial and ethnic composition is associated with nonprofit human services expenditures per capita, after accounting for demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic factors that predict those expenditures. The county percentage of Black residents is negatively associated with nonprofit human services expenditures after controlling for relevant covariates. The negative association between the Hispanic or Latino population and expenditures appears to be driven by state political characteristics. Regional analyses suggest these national patterns are driven by low rates of human services provision for Black, Hispanic, and Latino populations in the South. Racial and ethnic disparities in the provision of nonprofit human services are an urgent problem for human services policy to address, particularly in the South, where the underprovision of services to communities of color is most pronounced.