Geographical variations in expenditure of learning disability services in England

Abstract

This article investigates the determinants of local authority Learning Disability (LD) expenditure in England. It adopts a reduced form of demand and supply model, extended to account for possible interdependence between municipalities. Risk factors such as ‘people aged under 14’, ‘mortality rate’ and ‘lone parents’ seem to play an important role in explaining geographical variation of spending. Further, labour municipalities on average allocate lower resources on LD than do other political parties. Finally, results corroborate recent findings in economics that authorities interact with each other when allocating public resources.

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge financial support from ESRC (ref. no. RES-061-25-0317). I am grateful to two anonymous referees.

Notes

¹ The expenditure measures cover the following services: assessment and care management, nursing home placements, residential care home placements, supported and other accommodation, direct payments (consumer-directed purchases of services), home care, day care, equipment and adaptations, meals, other services to adults with LD needs.

² http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/index.htm.

³ http://www.statistics.gov.uk/.

⁴ http://www.landreg.gov.uk/.

⁵ http://www.parliament.uk/.

⁶ Conversely, a negative coefficient may arise by the presence of scale effects, implying that larger local authorities in terms of population size are likely to exhibit economies of scale in the provision of health care.