New England Public Policy Center Policy Brief No. 07-4
by Matthew Nagowski

Full-text paper

This policy brief summarizes the New England findings from the Center’s 2006 Working Paper:  Measuring Fiscal Disparities Across U.S. States: A Representative Revenue System/Representative Expenditure System Approach. States and their local governments vary both in their needs to provide basic public services and in their abilities to raise revenues to pay for those services. This study uses the Representative Revenue System (RRS) and the Representative Expenditure System (RES) frameworks to quantify these disparities across states by comparing each state’s revenue capacity, revenue effort, and necessary expenditures to the average capacity, effort, and need in states across the country for fiscal year 2002.