不論就理論或實踐的面向而言，社會福利的分權化發展都是西方福利國家的主要發展趨勢。而在臺灣，地方政府所扮演的福利角色也正隨著「精省」與地方自主意識的提高，而變得明顯與重要。然而，這個新的發展趨勢並沒有受到足夠的重視和討論。基於這個不足，本文以1994到1997年二十三個縣市政府的社會福利發展做為研究對象，透過相關理論的梳理與影響地方政府社會福利發展的事實取證，形成一個可能的分析模型。經由「複迴歸分析」和「典型相關分析」方法的運用，本研究發現政黨、地方政府財政規模、地方財政自主程度、區域工業化程度、和區域依賴人口比例等因素，是影響臺灣地方政府社會福利發展的最主要因素。這個發現可以我後們對臺灣的社會福利發展有新的考察可能。

The same as other forerunning states, the welfare system in Taiwan also underwent a decentralized development in recent years. This occurrence, as it appeared on the scene, mainly resulted from the attempt at downsizing Taiwan’s provincial government, and the emergence of the voice of local self-government in mid 1990s Yet, up to the present, students have paid little attention to this newly developed phenomenon. To find out the factor that brought the local welfare system into existence, and to build up an analytical model to explain its development, this study exams twenty-three counties and cities’ welfare practices between 1994 and 1997. By multiple regression analysis and canonical correlation analysis, the author comes to concludes that the development has been greatly affected by such factors as party competition, scale of local finance, degree of local autonomy, degree of industrialization, and, the size of local population.