Federal Government Transfers By State, 2011

Politics often gets entangled in economic development policy, occasionally around the incendiary argument around who are the “makers” and who are the “takers.” The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) provides data on the amount of government transfers to households including those related to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, income maintenance programs and unemployment insurance. Civic Analytics, based in Texas, composed a data set of these BEA statistics alongside figures on Total Personal Income (TPI) in U.S counties (with the exception of Alaska that does not collect a personal income tax) to inject statistical foundations in the discussion. Read the civic analytics article...

Government transfers account for approximately 17 percent of TPI at the national level, but cover a broader range at the county level with figures ranging from 55 percent in Owsely County, KY, to around 5 percent in Douglas County, CO. SSTI has produced a table of these figures by state indexed by total personal income and population. View the table…