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Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0004-4614-1252

Date Available

8-3-2026

Year of Publication

2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College

Graduate School

Department/School/Program

Public Policy and Administration

Faculty

Rajeev Darolia

Abstract

In the United States, public policy does more than distribute resources. It distributes risk. The same policy can create profoundly different consequences for different people because policies operate on landscapes shaped by generations of unequal investment and opportunity.

To explore this process, I introduce the Stratified Risk Allocation (SRA) Framework to demonstrate how facially neutral policies reproduce inequality by allocating risk across populations with unequal capacity to absorb it. Drawing on risk society theory, historical institutionalism, critical race theory, intersectionality, and stratification economics, the SRA framework distinguishes between Exposure, the likelihood of encountering policy-generated risk, and Capacity, the resources available to absorb it. SRA identifies three mechanisms through which policy reproduces inequality: differential risk perception, policy layering complexity, and asymmetric burden transfer. In this framework attention shifts from asking whether policies treat people equally to exploring whether policies allocate risk equitably.

The framework is tested in two policy domains, housing and higher education finance. In the first empirical essay, I examine Lexington, Kentucky's 1958 Urban Growth Boundary, the nation's oldest UGB, and find that the facially neutral land-use policy amplified spatial and economic disparities by concentrating appreciation on a landscape already structured by historic redlining. In the second essay, I examine the federal student loan system using the 2022 Survey of Income and Program Participation. Measuring borrower vulnerability through a debt-to-wealth ratio, my analysis finds that wealth is the primary factor that explains which borrowers become most financially exposed under a uniform federal lending system.

Across both studies, the same pattern emerges; policies that appear equal in design produce unequal outcomes because they allocate the same risks across populations with drastically different starting conditions. By identifying the mechanisms through which this occurs, the Stratified Risk Allocation framework offers a new way to understand how inequality is reproduced and provides a foundation for studying risk allocation across future domains including consumer debt, retirement security, and health policy.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2026.385

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