How Dependent Is Pennsylvania On The Federal Government?

By MARC TORRENCE and JUSTIN HEINZE

How dependent is Pennsylvania 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

Pennsylvania came in at No. 22, with No. 1 being the least dependent and No. 50 being the most, tied with Alaska and just ahead of Texas.

The Keystone State’s neighbors, New Jersey and Delaware, were the first and second least dependent states in the entire nation.

You can see the full results in the map below:

Source: WalletHub

The next least dependent states were Illinois, Minnesota and Kansas. The most dependent were Montana, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and New Mexico.

Pennsylvania ranked as the 13th state overall for return on taxpayer investment, getting $1.41 back per taxpayer on the federal income tax contributions.

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.