I’d been saving this interesting little chart for a more in-depth post on the Red State/Blue State thing but I’m posting it now to support a comment I made to this post on Q&O Blog. Click on the image to get a sizeable one. The post raises some conjectures on the sources of the advantageous position that the Red States (as a group) have in terms of federal expenditures per tax dollar, speculating that:
- The Red states receive the lion’s share of federal retirement benefits.
- There are more military bases in Red states
- Higher per capita incomes in the Blue states
The chart appears to contradict the first claim.
There are quite a few military bases in Blue states: check here for Navy, here for Army, here for Air Force. Illinois has a major naval training facility. New York has a number of substantial army bases not to mention West Point. And, of course, California is military base central.
My own impression is that high taxable incomes in the Blue States are the most important component of the Red State/Blue State tax ROI.
The source document is here (>1MB).
Eyeballing this, it looks to me like gross federal expenditures correspond only weakly with redness/blueness.
That chart shows 15 red and and 10 blue states above the average line, 16 red and 9 blue states below the line. That’s damn-all close to zero correlation.
As to rich state/poor state… look, it’s eminently testable. Plug the relevant datasets — gross fed, net fed, and household income — into Excel. (Maybe add per capita income too, because it drifts well away from household in some states.) Add another, where you give %age Bush over Kerry.
Tell Excel to correlate A, B and C with D. Which gives the highest coefficient of correlation?
As I said, I did this in 2001 (using 2000 numbers). I found that net fed — as measured in dollars given back for every dollar spent — correlated with redness (Bush-Gore number) at about 0.6. Which rose to about 0.7 when I threw out HI, AL and DC as outliers.
I’d be surprised if gross fed was anywhere near that high. Household income… hm, not sure.
Hang on. [googles]
Okay, here’s some data. Eyeballing, we see that four of the five richest states are blue, while all five of the poorest states are red. Interesting! You may be on to something.
Looking more closely… there are exceptions. Virginia, Colorado and Utah are relatively rich. New Mexico and Maine are poor.
Still, looks like the correlation is pretty high.
Look, why not try the Excel thing? It’ll give you a solid answer, and put an end to speculation. IMS it took me about 45 minutes: 10 minutes research, 10 minutes data entry, the rest figuring out how to make Excel do the correlation.
Doug M.
You’re nearly there, but what you need to explain it is cost-of-living. Probably cost-of-housing will be good enough.
High cost states have reduced retirement payments (retirees move somewhere cheaper), higher average income (and income taxes), and fewer dirt poor folk. Military bases are rarer, as the cost to the military is too high. Etc.
Bear in mind that states with the highest number of children will also get more money from the child tax credit and federal subsidies to schools, which all districts get regardless of income.
Most of the blue states have much lower childbirth rates than the red states. Compare births-per-woman in Vermont vs. Utah for the most dramatic example of that. (This has been in numerous sources, Best of the Web sourced it yesterday.)
I just looked that info up the other day, Dean. Except for the Vermont and Utah outliers there’s not a huge difference between the Red and Blue State birthrates. Blue California is about the same as Red Georgia, for example.
What the stats seem to indicate is that birthrate is inversely correlated with population density and that “Blue”-ness is positively correlated with it.
What the stats seem to indicate is that birthrate is inversely correlated with population density and that “Blue”-ness is positively correlated with it.
Are we talking gross birth rate, or TFR? Different things.
Eyeballing the data, it looks like TFR is loosely correlated with blueness — it’s lowest in the northeast, much higher in the west.
Let’s see. Five lowest TFR states, 2002 data: Maine, Massachussetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Ten highest TFR states: Utah, New Mexico, Texas, Nevada, Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Hawaii, Georgia.
Very strong correlations at the ends, though it gets mushy in the middle. (Red Alabama, South Carolina, and West Virginia all have quite low TFRs, while Blue New Jersey and Illinois have relatively high ones.) I’d guess it’s around 0.5, though again, I’d like to see someone run the numbers.
Population density… a lot of exceptions, there. You would need to explain why Alabamans and North Dakotans have more or less given up having kids, while New Jerseyers are carrying right on.
Doug M.
You’re not factoring the number of “capita” per state/sq m. Very relevant, considering the minimal correlation.