This policy brief summarizes the Center's 2006 working paper, Measuring Fiscal Disparities Across the U.S. States: A Representative Revenue System/Representative Expenditure System Approach, Fiscal Year 2002.

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.

To review other Center research about state and local public finance, please visit our research index.