Morality politics vs. political economy: The case of school-based health centers

Objective. Scholars continue to debate whether morally charged political is sues constitute a distinct type of policy question or produce essentially t he same political dynamic as public controversies lacking an overt moral di mension. The debate will not be resolved until scholars test the determinan ts of putative morality policies with predictors drawn both from morality p olitics theory and from the socioeconomic factors that account for the dist ribution of many other public policies. This study reports such a tt:st. Me thods. We analyze data from our national survey of directors of school-base d health centers. We use ordinary least squares regression models to predic t the level of reproductive health care services provided to adolescents. R esults. Service levels were influenced not only by cultural considerations, as morality politics theory would anticipate, but also by the same socioec onomic forces that account for policy levels in other domains. Conclusions. policy for morality issues appears different from that for nonmorality iss ues but less distinctive than commonly imagined.