Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney recently decried the high number of Americans receiving government aid. In the Sacramento region, roughly 19 cents of every dollar in personal income comes from the government.
The amount of Sacramento income from government assistance has doubled in the last 15 years and risen eight-fold in the last four decades, after adjusting for inflation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Roughly $16 billion in local income comes from government aid.
Nearly three-fourths of local government aid comes in the form of retirement benefits like Social Security or medical benefits like Medicare and MediCal.
These tables show inflation-adjusted growth in government aid in the Sacramento region and how that aid is distributed.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
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