The underlying source for the data base on U.S. domestic assistance programs that we have constructed is the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA). In this appendix we discuss the data file that contains descriptive information on programs for each year from 1971 through 1990.

The data file derived from the CFDA contains no geographic detail nor is it a record of the specific awards made by federal agencies. Instead it describes the types of recipients that are eligible for assistance, the form of the assistance provided, the amount of money that the agency is authorized to spend on assistance awards, policy areas served by the program, and information about the history of the program.

The catalog was first published in 1965 by the Office of Economic Opportunity. From the outset, its purpose was to serve potential applicants and recipients of federal programs as a guide in applying for federal assistance. In its early years, the catalog underwent considerable evolution in coverage, content, and programmatic detail, making year-to-year comparisons across programs virtually impossible. By 1971, the catalog was being published by the Bureau of the Budget and had matured into essentially the form that it continues to take today (in the early 1980s it was shifted to the General Services Administration). Several points should be noted about the catalog and, by extension, the data file that is based on it.

First, the operational definition of a domestic assistance program used in the catalog provides a reasonable approximation to the formal definition of a program offered in Chapter 1.