“It’s truly astonishing how fiscally irresponsible New York is. The state budget proposal calls for $254 billion in spending, which is 8.3 percent higher than last year. That comes despite New York’s population having peaked in 2020. It’s a spending increase far in excess of the rate of inflation to provide government services for fewer people,” notes economist Tyler Cowen.
Economist David Ditch
compares the New York state budget to the Florida state budget, a sensible comparison since both are big states with major urban and rural areas and high levels of demographic and economic diversity. He finds:
- New York’s spending per capita was 30 percent higher than Florida’s in 2000. It was 133 percent higher last year.
- New York’s Medicaid spending per capita was 112 percent higher than Florida’s in 2000. It was 208 percent higher last year. Florida has not expanded Medicaid under Obamacare, while New York has expanded it more aggressively than any other state. “For perspective, in 2024 New York spent nearly as much per capita on Medicaid ($4,551) as Florida did for its entire state budget ($5,076).”
- New York’s education spending per student is highest in the country, at about $35,000. Florida spends about $13,000 per student. Florida fourth-graders rank third in the country in reading and fourth in math. New York fourth-graders rank 36th and 46th.
- Florida has surpassed New York in population and continues to boom.
National Review’s Dominic Pino writes more about this at this link. Mississippi is much poorer than New York State and spends much less on education, yet its students do much better on fourth grade reading tests than New York State students do.
Progressive New York gets worse results despite spending more money than Republican states such as Utah, Idaho, Florida, and Mississippi. As we noted last year,
New data show New York State spends three times more per pupil on K-12 public schools than Utah and Idaho,” yet New York “schools are no better,” notes Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute:
New York’s state and local governments appear to be incredibly bloated. New York State’s population is 10 percent less than Florida’s, yet governments in New York spend 81 percent more, have more than twice as much debt, and have 32 percent more public employees than governments in Florida.
The Empire State’s bloat is clear in public school spending, based on new data from the US Department of Education. The chart below shows K‑12 spending per pupil for fiscal year 2022. The spending in each state is funded by federal, state, and local taxpayers.
New York spent $29,284 per pupil, which was three times the spending in Utah of $9,496 and Idaho of $9,662, and it was almost twice the US average of $15,591.
Are New York schools better than those in Utah and Idaho? The Nation’s Report Card says that grade eight kids in New York score about the same on writing as kids in Utah and Idaho, but they score worse on math, science, and reading.
New York schools: skyscraping costs for so‐so results.
New York schools perform worse than the national average on math, science, and reading for fourth graders, and significantly worse than the Utah schools on math, science, and reading for fourth graders. Meanwhile, there are states that spend less than the national average per pupil, yet have above average scores for math, science, and reading for fourth graders, such as Iowa, Nebraska, and Virginia, among others.
New York State and the District of Columbia spend more than any other states in K-12 spending per pupil. The District of Columbia also has lower than average scores. The Washington, DC schools have been spending more than any state for years, even as its students lag behind on tests, according to the National Center for Education Statistics:
In 2019 …. eighth graders in D.C. public schools had an average score of 250 out of 500 in the NAEP reading test. That was a lower average than any of the 50 states.
That same year, according to NCES, D.C. public school eighth graders had an average score of 269 out of 500 in the NAEP mathematics test. That tied D.C. eighth graders with those in New Mexico and Alabama for the lowest average mathematics score in the nation.
