The amount a state’s budget allocates to family support is driven by need and state priorities. It can therefore be helpful to compare expenditures between states and over time when assessing family supports. The State Expenditures Dashboard enables those comparisons.
To develop the State Expenditures Dashboard, Mathematica collected data from the US Census Bureau’s Annual Survey of Government Finances (ASGF) and the Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Program for 2015–2019. Mathematica chose to collect data from the ASGF because of its standardized reporting, availability over time and across states, and detailed categorization of expenditures. Using the item codes in the data, Mathematica developed an aggregation schema for consolidating codes into manageable and meaningful expenditure types. A crosswalk between the item codes and expenditure types is in the following table:
Expenditure Types | Expenditure Function Item Code Numbers |
|---|---|
Elementary and secondary education | E12, J12, L12, M12, S12, and Q12 |
Housing and community development | E50, J50, L50, M50, S50, and Q50 |
Libraries and parks and recreation | E52, J52, L52, M52, S52, Q52, E61, J61, L61, M61, S61, and Q61 |
Public welfare—federal categorical assistance programs (Supplemental Security Income, TANF, Medicaid) | E67, J67, L67, M67, S67, and Q67 |
Public welfare—other cash assistance programs | E68, J68, L68, M68, S68, and Q68 |
Public welfare—other | E75, J75, L75, M75, S75, Q75, E77, J77, L77, M77, S77, Q77, E79, J79, L79, M79, S79, and Q79 |
Unemployment compensation–regular unemployment benefits | Y05 |
Because state expenditures are not directly comparable due to differences in population sizes and demographics and costs of living across states, Mathematica incorporated ecosystem measures into the dashboard to give users contexts when they interpret the state expenditures. Ecosystem measures and their data sources include:
Ecosystem measure | Data source description |
|---|---|
Cost of infant child care | Child Care Aware releases reports every year that provide child care costs by state. Child care costs in 2021 can be found here. |
Meal cost | Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap visualization displays annual food insecurity estimates. This information includes meal cost by state. The interactive map can be found here. |
Labor force participation rate | Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey provides information on the US labor force, including labor force participation rates. The labor force participation rate for 2021 can be found here. |
Child poverty rate | The US Census Bureau provides annual income and poverty statistics based on the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey. The child poverty rate for 2021 can be found here. |
Fair Market Rent (3 bedroom) | The US Department of Housing and Urban Development conducts an annual study to determine Fair Market Rent in each US county. The Fair Market Rent for each state in 2021 can be found here. |
The data for the State Expenditures Dashboard are available here: Public Use Data File (CSV, 321KB).
A codebook explaining the variables is also available here: Download SED codebook (XLSX, 96KB)