Geographical variations in expenditure of learning disability services in England

This article investigates the determinants of local authority Learning Disability (LD) expenditure in England. It adopts a reduced form of demand and supply model, extended to account for possible interdependence between municipalities. Risk factors such as ‘people aged under 14’, ‘mortality rate’ and ‘lone parents’ seem to play an important role in explaining geographical variation of spending. Further, labour municipalities on average allocate lower resources on LD than do other political parties. Finally, results corroborate recent findings in economics that authorities interact with each other when allocating public resources.