Per capita federal welfare expenditures by state

Commenter Jesuswarehouse helpfully dug up several links, including federal expenditures by state on a host of things. Sifting through them, I've figured total per capita federal welfare spending--defined here as childhood nutrition programs, food stamp programs, WIC benefits, and TANF benefits--by state. Such a table does not appear to be floating around anywhere else on the web. For that reason, it is presented here. The latest year all necessary figures appear to be available from is 2005. Consequently, all data are from that year:

State	Per capita $
1. District of Columbia	291.55
2. New York	218.25
3. California	173.46
4. New Mexico	168.13
5. Alaska	165.27
6. Vermont	146.16
7. Louisiana	139.98
8. Michigan	135.89
9. Oklahoma	133.89
10. Rhode Island	132.39
11. Pennsylvania	127.59
12. Mississippi	127.57
13. Georgia	121.78
14. West Virginia	119.89
15. Kentucky	119.51
16. Oregon	119.30
17. Hawaii	118.86
18. Connecticut	117.29
19. New Jersey	117.04
20. Washington	115.73
21. Maine	113.70
22. Arizona	113.44
23. North Dakota	111.08
24. Massachusetts	108.79
25. Wisconsin	108.05
26. Wyoming	107.58
27. South Dakota	106.80
28. North Carolina	106.61
29. Texas	105.87
30. Kansas	104.59
31. Illinois	102.06
32. Iowa	101.68
33. Delaware	100.67
34. Minnesota	100.61
35. Arkansas	97.95
36. Montana	97.89
37. Missouri	95.81
38. Nebraska	95.42
39. Alabama	95.08
40. Utah	93.25
41. Tennessee	92.96
42. Ohio	91.13
43. South Carolina	89.69
44. Idaho	84.76
45. Maryland	77.92
46. Indiana	77.85
47. Colorado	68.06
48. Nevada	65.23
49. Virginia	59.61
50. Florida	59.19
51. New Hampshire	53.42

Vermont's high take stands out, as the state generally fares well on quality-of-life measures. I would have expected it to show similarity to New Hampshire. However, per capita expenditures only weakly correlate* with the usual suspects--with the poverty rate at .33 (p=.02), with the non-Asian minority (NAM) percentage of the population at .22 (p=.13), and inversely with estimated average IQ at .22 (p=.13). Blue states receive a little more than red states do, but a state's political persuasion doesn't reveal much--federal welfare expenditures correlate inversely with Bush's '04 share of the vote at .24 (p=.09).

Not surprisingly, there are factors other than 'need' at work in determining how much the federal government doles out to its tributaries.

A visualization of the table is available here. Data are here.

* All correlations exclude the District of Columbia.