Brookings’ Brown Center researched the distribution of voucher benefits in several states. There’s lots of wonkiness in the result by Analisa Pines, Jon Valant, and Nicolas Zerbino, but here’s a look at the subsection that focuses on two states with no income limits of voucher eligibility. The results speak loudly.
We identified two programs with usable data that don’t consider income at all. That is, these programs don’t use strict income limits, income-based priorities, or sliding scales for voucher amounts. These are Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program and West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship program.3
The figures below show ESA participation rates (y-axis) by the median family income of the local geographic area (x-axis). Each dot represents one geographic area. For Arizona (Figure 1), these are ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (basically, ZIP codes). Since Arizona has a lot of ZIP codes, Arizona’s figure has a lot of dots. West Virginia (Figure 2) reports participation at the county level, so it doesn’t have as many dots. In all figures, dot sizes are proportional to number of school-age children who live in that area.
The upward slopes indicate that—in these programs that do not consider income—higher-income communities have higher participation rates than lower-income communities. In these states, those patterns are clear. Moreover, some of the very highest participation rates are in the very highest-income communities.