Income inequality measures how evenly wealth is distributed among residents of an area. Income inequality is high when a few people make a great deal and many make far less. Six of the ten states that are most generous are in the top 15 states for highest rates of income inequality. The three states with the greatest inequality in the country -- New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts -- are among the most generous. Many of the states giving the least, such as Idaho and Indiana, fall on the other end of the spectrum for income inequality.

It also happens that the states that spend the most on their residents have particularly high costs of living. While it may be that state governments simply give more because costs are higher, the difference in spending does reflect the entire situation. In many cases the most generous states also provide benefits for longer periods of time, such as unemployment and cash assistance for needy families. Nine of the ten states on the list are within the top 15 for highest costs of living. and seven of the ten least giving states are within the bottom 15 for cost of living.

24/7 Wall St. used the percent of former weekly wages covered by state unemployment insurance to rank unemployment benefits by state, using data from The National Employment Law Project. The amount each state spends on education per student, including teacher salaries, as well as data on income inequality, measured by the Gini coefficient, comes from the Census Bureau. Medicaid spending per recipient is from The Urban Institute and Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. Medicare spending per recipient is from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. 24/7 ranked the average amount each state employee receives in pension benefits per year using data from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College on defined benefit plans. Data on the average number of months of benefits received and the average monthly amount of cash assistance from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a welfare program that provides cash assistance to American families with dependent children, was obtained from the Administration for Children and Families. Cost of living data is from the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center.

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