Mountain aid : geographic assessment of the Appalachian Regional Commission's social programs

Over the past thirty years, the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) has expended $6.5 billion federal dollars on highways and a variety of social programs to stimulate economic development in thirteen states. This research analyzes the geographic character of the ARC's education and health care policies and expenditures. Internal documents of the ARC and interviews with current and former ARC staff members are used to identify policies. A database of pertinent ARC projects and a variety of federal and state statistics are used to map and explain spatial variations in education and health care expenditures.

This research uncovers different spatial patterns for education and health care expenditures that previous studies failed to identify. Statistical analyses reveal several variables that explain the spatial variations of expenditures. The discovery of coal production as an important variable in explaining health care expenditures is interesting for what it says about the relationship between the coal industry and the ARC. While the ARC was conscious not to be critical of the coal industry, the ARC indirectly acknowledged the social and economic malaise the coal industry created by investing heavily in the coalfields. Education expenditures are more evenly distributed among the population than health care. This research also finds that changes in Congressional appropriation procedures altered dramatically the character of education and health care expenditures.

This research concludes that the ARC's social programs, while not accomplishing its legislative mandate of creating a highly-skilled and healthy labor force, were not complete failures. The ARC significantly improved the region's infrastructure of vocational schools and medical facilities. Without this investment, Appalachia's infrastructure would never have been helped because no other organization filled the financial void left by declining ARC expenditures.