Replication Data for: Just Say No: The Diffusion of Drug Testing for Welfare Proposals Across US States

Existing research shows a significant relationship between state racial minority population, the proportion of racial minority welfare recipients, and state levels of racial resentment with the proposal and adoption of punitive welfare policies (Soss et al. 2001; Fellowes and Rowe 2004; Volden 2006, Ledford 2018, etc.). This paper contributes to the extant literature by expanding on Ledford’s (2018) 2008-2014 analysis of state drug testing proposals by evaluating state-level racial factors and the diffusion of drug testing proposals from 2009 to 2018. Moreover, I account for the potential influence of drug-related variables on the probability of proposal by including variables measuring opioid overdose deaths and illicit drug use estimates. Event history analyses do not find that the size of a state’s Black population or percentage or proportion of Black welfare recipients have a significant effect on proposal. However, higher estimates of state-level racial resentment increase the likelihood of proposing drug testing for welfare legislation, supporting Ledford’s (2018) conclusion that racial biases matter in the diffusion of these policies. I find evidence that while opioid overdoses are negatively associated with the likelihood of proposal, estimates of illicit drug use have the opposite effect. Finally, analyses suggest that liberalism in state governments actually increases the probability of proposal.