States Most and Least Dependent on Feds
The financial website WalletHub.com has ranked the states that are most and least dependent on the federal government. The results may surprise you.
In order to identify which states most and least depend on the federal government, WalletHub analyzed the 50 U.S. states across four key metrics, including: 1) the return on taxes paid to the federal government; 2) federal funding as a percentage of state revenue; 3) the number of federal employees per capita and 4) the number of civilian non-defense federal employees per capita.
States Least Dependent on the Federal Government
1 New Jersey
2 Delaware
3 Illinois
4 Minnesota
5 Kansas
6 California
7 Connecticut
8 Massachusetts
9 Nebraska
10 Ohio
States Most Dependent on the Federal Government
41 Maine
42 South Dakota
43 Louisiana
44 Arizona
45 West Virginia
46 Montana
47 Alabama
48 Kentucky
49 Mississippi
50 New Mexico
Wyoming ranked as the 36th least dependent, or if you prefer, 15th most dependent on federal largesse.
Key Stats
• With an average dependency ranking of 33.2, red states are altogether more reliant on federal funding than blue states, which ranked 18.3 on average (the smaller the ranking, the less dependent the state).
• There is a 57 percent correlation between a state’s federal dependency and its per-capita GDP. That means the least wealthy states tend to be those receiving the most federal support.
For the full report and to see where your state ranks, please visit: