How Dependent is New York on the Federal Government?

BY MARC TORRENCE

How dependent is New York on the federal government compared to other states?

It’s somewhere in the middle, according to a new study.

WalletHub conducted a study to answer that question across the county. It used four factors to come up with a ranking of all 50 states:

• Return on Taxes Paid to the Federal Government
• Federal Funding as a Percentage of State Revenue
• Number of Federal Employees per 1,000 Residents
• Number of Civilian Non-Defense Federal Employees per 1,000 Residents

New York came in at No. 20, with No. 1 being the least dependent and No. 50 being the most, right behind Washington and just ahead of Rhode Island.

You can see the full results in the map below:

The five least-dependent states were New Jersey, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota and Kansas. The most dependent were Montana, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and New Mexico.

There was one area where New York stands out: federal funding. Federal funding accounts for 43.39 percent of state revenue, which is more than any other state except Vermont.

One irony pointed out by WalletHub was the discrepancy in how states voted vs. how reliant they were on the federal government.

States that voted Republican in the 2012 election, whose party preaches less dependance on the government, had an average rank of 33.2. States that tend to vote Democrat had an average rank of 18.3.

See the full list, methodology and analysis at WalletHub.