Poverty multiplies the number of public agencies a person depends on

Evidence

Where government does not monopolize an essential service it often provides the only such service available to the poor. Health care and legal services, for example, can be obtained privately but only at relatively high cost. The cost of obtaining private assistance in these areas is so great, relative to income, that poor people are forced to seek assistance through public agencies or not to seek assistance at all. The poorer the person, the more he or she is likely to be the non voluntary client of not one but several street-level bureaucracies. Relatively affluent people can seek out a private doctor instead of a public clinic. Middle-class families dissatisfied with their school systems can change residences. These options are less available to the poor. This relationship between poor people and public agencies provides grounds for concluding that poor people receive a qualitatively different kind of treatment from the state. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 422

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to the reader’s causal question because nonvoluntary, exit-free dependence is what lets frontline discretion routinize stereotypes unchecked by client discipline. — connects to: Poverty structurally exposes people to more and conflicting street-level bureaucrats.; Poverty increases a person’s exposure to contradictory street-level bureaucratic interventions — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 90

Broader Connections

• Poverty structurally exposes people to more and conflicting street-level bureaucrats. #expands (0.95)
• Poverty increases a person’s exposure to contradictory street-level bureaucratic interventions #expands (0.95) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 90