Counties with larger Black and Hispanic populations see significantly less spending for critical nonprofit human services—including food banks, housing assistance, and homelessness shelters—than predominantly white counties, according to new research published in Race and Social Problems.

Shoshana Shapiro, now a Postdoctoral Fellow at Michigan Medicine, conducted the research as part of her dissertation work in Sociology and Public Policy at the University of Michigan, where she was a trainee of the Population Studies Center.

Shapiro analyzed IRS tax filings from every U.S. county in 2017, examining how much nonprofits spend per resident on antipoverty services. Nonprofit human services represent a major piece of the American social safety net, with federal investment estimated at over $100 billion annually. But Shapiro’s analysis revealed stark disparities in spending that varied by population: Majority-Black counties saw median per capita expenditures of just $41.20, compared to $108.61 in predominantly white counties.

After controlling for income, education, unemployment, and other county characteristics, each one-percentage-point increase in a county's Black population was associated with a 1.59 percent decrease in services expenditures per capita. The pattern was especially pronounced in the South, where disparities were larger than the national average and appeared to drive the overall trend.

For Hispanic and Latino communities, the picture was more complex: Rather than finding a robust national pattern, Shapiro found that lower provisions for Hispanic-majority counties seemed tied to state-level political factors.

The disparities compounded with poverty. Counties that were both low-income and majority-Black or Hispanic received far less support than comparably poor white communities, suggesting that race and class intersect to disadvantage the same populations that most need help.

Shapiro argues these findings point to structural racism embedded in how America's decentralized, grant-based nonprofit safety net operates.

She proposes several policy responses, including dedicated federal grant set-asides for underserved communities and a new network of "Federally Qualified Human Services Centers," modeled on programs like community health centers, to guarantee baseline service provision where the market has failed.

Shapiro completed her dissertation in 2023 under the mentorship of Sarah Burgard and Luke Schaefer. She is now a fellow in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Michigan, where her research includes social determinants of vision care and access to vision care for underserved populations. She was previously a National Poverty Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

This post was written by Tevah Platt, Communications Manager for the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.