The Innovation and Diffusion of Social Equity Budgeting

The aim of the Essex Accounting Centre (EAC) research seminar series is to support our world-class research activities in five key areas: accounting and global development; capital Markets, audit, regulation & reporting; publicness and resilience, precarity, exclusion & social justice; and environment, climate change & vulnerability. The seminar series is also expected to promote inter-disciplinary research that links the work of members of the centre with others both within the university and with external institutions.

Social equity, understood in terms of fairness, due process, and justice, is one of the key pillars of public administration. While significant attention has been paid in recent years to understanding the roots of inequity and its implications on governance, little has been done to understand why a government will (or will not) adopt the principles of equity in its decision making, particularly concerning budgeting.

In this study, we take a unique approach to social equity and explore the innovation and diffusion of social equity into the public budgeting and finance process. Although most governments have expressed an interest at improving equity within their decision making processes, relatively few have taken steps to incorporate it into their finances. Using an event history analysis approach and data of North Carolina counties from 2010 through 2023, we draw on the theory of constitutional contracts to determine the demographic, economic, and political determinants of social equity budgeting adoption.