Coproduction and Equity in Public Service Delivery

Public managers and researchers devote much attention to the benefits of coproduction, or the mixing of the productive efforts of public employees and citizens in public service design and delivery. One concern, however, is the distributional consequences of coproduction. This article proposes that disadvantaged citizens may be constrained by a lack of knowledge or other resources necessary to contribute to and benefit from the coproduction process. From this assumption, the authors develop the theoretical argument that if coproduction programs were designed to lift constraints on disadvantaged citizens, they might increase both efficiency and equity. This claim is tested using a field experiment on educational services. A coproduction program providing immigrant parents with knowledge and materials useful to their children's early educational development had a substantial positive impact on the educational outcomes of disadvantaged children, thereby diminishing inequity. Economically, the program was more efficient than later compensation of low-performing children.

[1]  M. Rowe,et al.  Child-directed speech: relation to socioeconomic status, knowledge of child development and child vocabulary skill* , 2008, Journal of Child Language.

[2]  J. Heckman.  Skill Formation and the Economics of Investing in Disadvantaged Children , 2006, Science.

[3]  Graham Smith,et al.  Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think: Using Experiments to Change Civic Behaviour , 2011 .

[4]  J. Brudney,et al.  Toward a Definition of the Coproduction Concept , 1983 .

[5]  Melissa Marschall.  Parent Involvement and Educational Outcomes for Latino Students , 2006 .

[6]  Gøsta Esping-Andersen,et al.  A Child‐Centred Social Investment Strategy , 2002 .

[7]  N. Roberts.  Public Deliberation in an Age of Direct Citizen Participation , 2004 .

[8]  Donald P. Green,et al.  Analysis of Cluster-Randomized Experiments: A Comparison of Alternative Estimation Approaches , 2007, Political Analysis.

[9]  E. Ostrom.  Crossing the great divide: Coproduction, synergy, and development , 1996 .

[10]  Morten Jakobsen,et al.  Can Government Initiatives Increase Citizen Coproduction? Results of a Randomized Field Experiment , 2013 .

[11]  J. Brudney.  Local Coproduction of Services and the Analysis of Municipal Productivity , 1984 .

[12]  Taco Brandsen,et al.  Co-production, the third sector and the delivery of public services , 2006 .

[13]  G. Esping‐Andersen,et al.  Family Investments in Children—Productivities, Preferences, and Parental Child Care , 2011 .

[14]  S. Hollis,et al.  What is meant by intention to treat analysis? Survey of published randomised controlled trials , 1999, BMJ.

[15]  S. Percy,et al.  Citizen Involvement in Coproducing Safety and Security in the Community , 1987 .

[16]  E. Ostrom,et al.  CONSUMERS AS COPRODUCERS OF PUBLIC SERVICES: SOME ECONOMIC AND INSTITUTIONAL CONSIDERATIONS , 1981 .

[17]  V. Pestoff.  Citizens and co-production of welfare services , 2006 .

[18]  Helen F. Ladd,et al.  Institutional Change and Coproduction of Public Services: The Effect of Charter Schools on Parental Involvement , 2006 .

[19]  E. Ostrom,et al.  A Public Economy Approach to Education: Choice and Co-Production , 1991 .

[20]  M. Rosentraub,et al.  Coproduction, Equity, and the Distribution of Safety , 1984 .

[21]  Jonathan Guryan,et al.  Parental Education and Parental Time with Children , 2008 .

[22]  D. Firth.  Bias reduction of maximum likelihood estimates , 1993 .

[23]  Anuradha Joshi,et al.  Institutionalised Co-production: Unorthodox Public Service Delivery in Challenging Environments , 2004 .

[24]  T. Bovaird.  Beyond Engagement and Participation: User and Community Coproduction of Public Services , 2007 .

[25]  L. Bingham,et al.  The New Governance: Practices and Processes for Stakeholder and Citizen Participation in the Work of Government , 2005 .

[26]  Lisa Blomgren Bingham,et al.  Introduction to the Symposium on Collaborative Public Management , 2006 .

[27]  S. Percy,et al.  Citizen Participation in the Coproduction of Urban Services , 1984 .

[28]  S. Goldin-Meadow,et al.  Differences in Early Gesture Explain SES Disparities in Child Vocabulary Size at School Entry , 2009, Science.

[29]  J. Alford,et al.  Defining the Client in the Public Sector: A Social‐Exchange Perspective , 2002 .

[30]  P. John,et al.  Can Citizen Governance Redress the Representative Bias of Political Participation , 2009 .

[31]  Melissa Marschall,et al.  Citizen Participation and the Neighborhood Context: A New Look at the Coproduction of Local Public Goods , 2004 .

[32]  S. Osborne.  The Third Sector in Europe: Prospects and challenges , 2008 .