Substitutes or Complements? A Study of Welfare Services in Utah.

What determines whether secular and religious organizations provide substitutes or complements? To investigate this question, we focus on one area, care of the poor, in which states and churches have significant overlap. While state welfare programs have crowded out church welfare efforts in many places, Utah seems to be an exception to this rule. We argue that the economic force behind Utah's welfare complementarity is the large share of individuals who fund both systems: tax-and-tithe payers. These individuals benefit when the welfare programs increase the value of each other, rather than cannibalize it. We test this theory against county-level data on religious adherence, Utah state welfare use, the 2019 Medicare expansion vote in Utah, and the comparable cases of Texas and Tennessee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]