The national debt, state by state

How to read these numbers

The population share is an illustration, not a bill. The federal government borrows in its own name and repays from federal revenue. Dividing the debt by each state’s share of the population simply shows the scale in terms of the people living there.

Federal tax collected is counted where it is filed. The IRS records payroll taxes withheld by an employer, and corporate income taxes, in the state where the company files — often its headquarters. States with many large employers and head offices therefore appear to pay far more per resident than their residents actually earn and owe.

Federal grants, not all federal spending. Grants — Medicaid, highway, education and hundreds of smaller programs — are recorded with the state and local bodies that receive them, which makes them comparable across states. Total federal contract and payment obligations are not compared by state: USAspending records large Medicare payments where the claims contractor or insurer is based. In fiscal year 2025 that placed about $90 billion of health spending on North Dakota, home of a major Medicare contractor.

For those reasons taxes and grants are shown side by side but never subtracted. A careful state-by-state balance of payments, adjusted for these effects, is published by the Rockefeller Institute of Government.

Household debt is private debt. It is what residents owe on mortgages, cars, credit cards and student loans — a separate thing from the national debt, shown here because it is the debt people in a state actually carry. The figure is per adult with a credit record.

Measured against the size of the whole economy instead, see debt to GDP; for the national figure per person and per taxpayer, see debt per person.