Introduction

In recent years, government finances have come under increased scrutiny. While it certainly isn’t the hot button issue it has been over the last few years, it is an issue that never go away. Most coverage of public financing focus on the federal government, but the states have a large amount of financial clout as well when looked at as a whole. At this time, the states have more then 1.1 trillion dollars in outstanding debt, but received 2.2 trillion in total revenue last year.

The data visualization below lets you see how this debt is distributed by state in raw totals, debt by person, and by 2013 revenue. You can also filter the data by region, division, and state to see the totals for the filtered data.

Visualization





Data Notes

It is important to note the debt figures from this visualization only include outstanding debts. Future debts, such as unfunded pension liabilities are not included since they are not yet realized as a cost. Other estimates that include this have calculate some states of having much more future debt.

The data from this visualization comes from two different surveys conducted by the US Census Bureau. Both of the data sets can be found on American FactFinder.Revenue and outstanding debt variables came from the 2013 Annual Survey of State Government Finances, Table SGF003. Population counts come from the 2013 Population Estimates, Table PEPANNRES.

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