West Virginia The Biggest Welfare State In Addition To Being Dumb


West Virginia cannot seem to get any love lately. In addition to being called the dumbest state in America, another recent study from George Washington University claims that WV also happens to be the biggest welfare state.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, even high school students are winning political office in West Virginia. But an Infoplease study claims the reason that West Virginia is the dumbest state is because of SAT scores and household income:

“West Virginia holds an average SAT score of 1513 and a MHI of $40,196, the third lowest in the nation, while claiming a 17.3 percent rate for the number of citizens holding bachelor’s degrees…. West Virginia was closely followed in the dumbest state race by Arkansas, which held a higher average SAT score of 1697, but fell near the bottom on MHI ($40,112 per year) and percentage of citizens with a bachelor’s degree (18.9 percent).”

The amount of help that the people of West Virginia receive from the federal government’s welfare programs is quite astounding. The state receives 26.2 percent of its annual income from welfare programs while the national average is far lower at 16.7 percent.

The list of welfare programs included in this study was Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program aka SNAP (formerly known as the Food Stamp program), veterans benefits, military medical benefits, unemployment insurance, and federal education programs, as well the Supplemental Security Income program, which helps low-income Americans who are 65 or older, blind, or disabled. Of course, 75 percent of all the money being spent comes from just Social Security (33.2 percent), Medicare (24.2 percent) and Medicaid (18.2 percent).

In order to compare West Virginia’s welfare programs, here are the other four states in the top five for sucking up the most money:

2. Mississippi (24.0 percent)

3. Arkansas (22.8 percent)

4. Kentucky (22.4 percent)

5. Alabama (21.8 percent)

Leighton Ku, the study’s author, used the numbers to try and push Obamacare, claiming that it would help the local economies:

“Many poor Southern states are opting against the Medicaid expansion, despite the economic benefits of expansion. This may lead them to fall further behind as income disparities widen again.”

Are you surprised that West Virginia is the biggest welfare state in America?

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