Our arithmetic was unique”

The Sheppard-Towner Act and the Constraints of Federalism on Data Collection Before the New Deal

Bibliographic Data

ID12178618
AuthorsMICHELLE BEZARK (Northwestern University, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume33
Issue2
Pages183-204
Publication date2021-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Policy History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0898-0306 • E-ISSN: 1528-4190
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0898030621000051
OpenAlexW3155500696
LanguageEN
References cited22

This article reveals how the politics of federalism in the 1920s stifled the U.S. Children’s Bureau’s ability to collect national data on the workings of the Sheppard-Towner Act. The Bureau staff’s reliance on state administrators for data hindered their efforts to collect standardized national statistics on the states’ use of federal dollars. Ultimately, this barrier contributed to Sheppard-Towner’s defeat in 1929. Though the law was short-lived, the problems the Children’s Bureau encountered administering it provide insights into how federal matching grant programs began to shape federal and state relations before the New Deal. As this article shows, Bureau staff learned from their experience administering Sheppard-Towner that they needed to implement more stringent federal oversight over state-level accounting in their administration of Title V of the Social Security Act

Administration (probate law · Federalism · Matching (statistics · New Federalism · Political science · Politics · Social security · State (computer science · Statistics · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Computer Science · Law · Public Administration

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