States receive annual federal assistance for things such as infrastructure, education, Medicaid programs, disasters and, of course, the Covid crisis. 

But some states receive a far higher return on their federal income-tax contributions than others, according to WalletHub.

To find out exactly which states depend most on the federal government for assistance, WalletHub compared the 50 states in terms of three key metrics – return on taxes paid to the federal government, share of federal jobs and federal funding as a share of state revenue. WalletHub then determined each state’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order the states.

The analysis revealed that there is a correlation between a state’s federal dependency and its per-capita GDP, meaning that the least wealthy states tend to receive the most federal support.

With exceptions such as Delaware, Utah, Colorado and a few others, the states with the lowest dependency tend to have a higher tax rate. 

Also, blue states, with an average dependency rank of 20.44, are less reliant on the federal government than red states, which have a rank of 30.56 on average.

The study looked at how ranks in terms of how much their residents depend on federal aid, and how much their state governments are dependent on the federal funds.

These are WalletHub's 2022 top 15 states that are most federally dependent:

15. Missouri

The state has high taxes (28th rank out of all states). Its state government's dependency rank on the federal government is ninth among all states and its residents' dependency on the government ranks 32nd. It has a low GDP per capita (36th).