Urban Restructuring and the Not-for-Profit Sector

Urban restructuring has entailed the decline of traditional manufacturing activity and a parallel growth of service industries. These service industries, in turn, have been affected by the privatization of governmental outputs in the face of public sector retrenchment. This paper argues that the expansion of the not-for-profit (NFP) sector, which includes voluntary, nonprofit organizations, charities and philantropies, and tax-exempt businesses, is linked to the growth and changing character of the service sector. Data on NFP activities are analyzed, using an input-output approach, and metropolitan areas are compared with respect to the extent of their NFP activity. Los Angeles, California is explored as a means of focussing on the interindustry structure of N FP production and evaluating national and regional differences in the character of NFP activity. The study indicates that NFP activities constitute a major element of the economy which have contributed towards the shift to a more service-oriented na...