← Research POLICY REPORT · 2024

The Great "Transfer"-mation: How American Communities Became Reliant on Income from Government

Kenan Fikri, Sarah Eckhardt, Ben Glasner

Economic Innovation Group

Summary

This report tracks the growth of government transfer income (Social Security, Medicare, SNAP, and related programs) as a share of personal income in American communities. Transfers grew from about 8 percent of total U.S. personal income in 1970 to almost 18 percent by 2022, and the share of counties substantially reliant on transfer income has quadrupled since 2000, reaching roughly half of all U.S. counties. The report attributes the shift mainly to an aging population, rising healthcare costs, and slow earnings growth elsewhere in the economy.

A plain-language summary written for this site, not the authors' published abstract. See the published version for the original.

Coverage and interviews

• Economist Ben Glasner on 'The Great Transfer-mation' (and it's NOT great!) KOA Colorado / iHeart · October 2024
• Americans Grow Increasingly Dependent on Government Payments Reason · October 2024
• Americans Are More Reliant Than Ever on Government Aid The Wall Street Journal · September 2024

All media and coverage

Cite this

Kenan Fikri, Sarah Eckhardt, and Ben Glasner. 2024. “The Great 'Transfer'-mation: How American Communities Became Reliant on Income from Government.” Economic Innovation Group. https://eig.org/great-transfermation/.

BibTeX

@techreport{fikri_eckhardt_glasner_2024_transfermation,
  title = {The {Great "Transfer"-mation}: How {American} Communities Became Reliant on Income from Government},
  author = {Fikri, Kenan and Eckhardt, Sarah and Glasner, Ben},
  institution = {Economic Innovation Group},
  year = {2024},
  month = sep,
  url = {https://eig.org/great-transfermation/},
}