High Capacity

The 10 healthiest states on the blended rank. Same fiscal dial as the uniformly weak end — flipped.

In the last piece I looked at the Uniformly Weak 10: states in the bottom half on jobs, safety, and schools at once. This piece looks at the other end — the top 10 on the States nowcast blended rank (the mean of the three pillar ranks; 1 = healthiest).

They are: New Jersey, Utah, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Wyoming, Florida, Kentucky, Wisconsin, and South Dakota.

Eight of the ten sit in the top half on all three pillars. New Hampshire (Jobs 27) and Wyoming (Jobs 28) make the list on Safety and Schools alone.

I used the same fifty-state structural panel as the weak study: about sixty indicators from Census, BEA, BLS, Pew, and related primary sources, comparing the top 10 with the other 40. The question: what do the strongest states share?

The mirror of thin capacity

The short answer is the same dial that defined the weak end, turned the other way. Three factors sit at the top of both lists.

1. Less household reliance on federal transfers. Eight of the ten have below-median government transfers as a share of personal income. Eight have a below-median Medicaid share. Transfers average 16.8% of personal income versus a 19.3% other-40 median (US 17.7%). Utah is the lowest in the country (12.5%); Connecticut and Wyoming are also in the bottom four. Medicaid alone runs 3.1% of personal income versus 3.9% for the other 40.

The federal share of the state budget is weaker as a shared trait — Kentucky (44.3%), South Dakota (41.6%), and Wyoming (40.1%) sit high — so the household side of the dial is cleaner than the state-budget side.

2. Schools funded more from local sources. Eight of the ten get an above-median share of K-12 revenue from local sources, mostly property taxes. Local share averages 47.3% versus 38.0% for the other 40 (US 43.2%). New Hampshire is #1 in the country (63.4%), Connecticut #2, Florida #4.

Among the fiscal factors in the panel, local school share is one of the strongest 50-state correlates of the blended rank (|ρ| = 0.41). Absolute Spearman is larger for some demographic shares; those describe who lives where, not a fiscal dial. A low federal school share is not shared — six of the ten sit above the median federal share (South Dakota 19.4%, Kentucky 17.1%).

As on the weak end: money source separates them; money level does not. Group per-pupil spending ($18.7k) is statistically flat against the other 40 ($17.3k). New Jersey is #3 nationally ($27.2k) and #1 on the blended rank. Utah spends $11.3k (#49) and still ranks #6 on Schools.

3. Higher real income, lower poverty. Seven of the ten have below-median poverty, and seven have above-median real per-capita income. Poverty averages 10.6% versus 11.6% (US 12.1%). Real per-capita income averages $81.7k versus $75.3k (BEA national PCPI $77.0k, US RPP = 100 — not the unweighted 50-state mean of state proxies). New Hampshire has the lowest poverty rate in the country (7.2%). Connecticut and Wyoming have the two highest real incomes in the panel.

Adult high-school completion runs with the cluster too (group 92.3% vs. 91.6% median), though the bachelor's-degree edge is shallower. Think of income, low transfers, local tax base, and attainment as one high-capacity setting with several readouts — the mirror of the weak group's low-capacity cluster.

What else shows up

The top 10 also skew older (seven of ten above-median age; New Hampshire 43.6, Florida 42.7 — Utah is the exception at 32.5, youngest in the US) and, on average, less racially and ethnically diverse (70.2% non-Hispanic white vs. 63.2% other-40 median). Four of the nine Northeast states sit in the group. Finance and insurance are a larger share of GDP in eight of the ten (group 9.5% vs. 6.0% median).

Composition and age describe who lives in these states. They are not causes. They are tangled up with income, history, rurality, and how crime and test data get collected. The two biggest counterexamples are inside the top 10: New Jersey is #1 on the blended rank at 49.5% non-Hispanic white, and South Dakota is in the top 10 with one of the largest American Indian population shares in the country (10.1%).

What does not define them

The usual suspects don't hold here either.

Party. Five Republican trifectas, three Democratic, two divided. Strength isn't a red-state story or a blue-state story.
Unions and right-to-work. The group splits in two. The four Northeast states are non-right-to-work and union-dense (Rhode Island and Connecticut 16.1% each). The six right-to-work states are union-light (South Dakota 2.3%, least in the country). Group union density (8.9%) matches the other-40 median.
Per-pupil spending. Bimodal, as above. Source of school money is shared; level isn't.
Climate, hazards, public land. No pattern. Florida is in the 91st percentile for expected disaster losses. Wisconsin is in the 5th. Utah (63.1% federal land) and Wyoming (47.7%) carry the same Western public-land profile that marks several weak states. Geography alone doesn't sort them.

Cost of living, growth, and urbanization don't separate them either.

Three archetypes inside the ten

Fit runs from 7.5 (New Hampshire, Connecticut) down to 1.5 (Kentucky). Roughly three shapes:

Northeast high-capacity core (New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey; Rhode Island weaker): high income, low transfers, the deepest local school tax bases in the country, high spending, unionized. New Jersey is the proof that capacity and funding base, not demographic homogeneity, can carry the pillars — #1 without a homogeneous population.
Low-transfer interior / Mountain states (Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota, Wisconsin): right-to-work, lower union density, low-to-mid spending, high high-school attainment. Strength comes more from household capacity than from public spending. Utah is the low-spend counterexample: #49 per pupil, Schools #6.
Structurally unexplained (Kentucky; partly Florida and Rhode Island): high on one or two pillars without the capacity profile. These are the cases where policy, measurement, or cyclical factors are more likely the story.

The outliers, honestly

Kentucky (#8) doesn't fit. On the fiscal dial it looks like a weak-group state. Government transfers are 25.4% of personal income (#3 in the country). Medicaid is the highest share of income anywhere (7.2%). Poverty is 15.6% (#5). Real per-capita income is $67.5k (#45). Local school share (37.0%) is below the median. It ranks #8 because it is solidly middle-of-the-pack on everything (Jobs 11, Safety 14, Schools 22), not because it has high capacity. I don't know why yet. It's the clearest case in the set where policy or measurement, rather than structure, is probably the story.

Rhode Island (#4) is a milder version: above-median poverty and transfers, Schools only 24, carried mainly by Safety (#5) and Jobs (#9). Treat its position as pillar-specific, not structural.

Wyoming looks like a resource state on paper (mining 12.7% of GDP, 47.7% federal land) — the same economic silhouette as weak Alaska or New Mexico — yet it is strong on Safety and Schools (both #8). The difference is high real income, low poverty, and a thick household base, not the industry mix. Its soft leg is Jobs (#28).

Florida fits on fiscal structure (heavy local school base; Medicaid 2.1% of personal income, near the bottom nationally) but not on income, diversity, spend (#45), or hazard. Safety #6 drives the rank; Schools is mid (#24). Florida is also 43% of the group's population, so any population-weighted claim about the top 10 is Florida-dominated.

What this does and doesn't say

Correlation isn't causation. Fifty state-level units; the capacity factors move together. Nothing here proves that raising local school share would raise a state's rank.
Schools is partly circular. Test scores track poverty, transfers, and adult education. Part of the Schools "explanation" is the pillar measuring the same thing again.
The dial explains Safety and Schools, not Jobs. Jobs barely correlates with any structural factor. New Hampshire and Wyoming are in the top 10 on Safety and Schools alone.
Small group; soft boundary. Maine (#11), North Dakota (#12), and Minnesota (#13) sit within about two rank-points of South Dakota (#10). One swap moves the counts.

Close

Flip the uniformly weak end and you get the same quiet story: how much of a community's income it earns for itself, and how much of its schools it pays for from its own tax base. The strongest states sit on the high-capacity side of that dial. Party, unions, and dollars-per-pupil don't sort them.

That doesn't tell any state what to do. It does tell you what the healthy end of the scoreboard tends to look like — and which states (Kentucky especially) need a different kind of look.

See where your state sits: https://www.henrycarstens.com/states

— Henry

Method. Group means are unweighted. "Median" means the other-40 median from this study's panel (the other 40 include the Uniformly Weak 10). Real income = BEA 2025 per-capita personal income ÷ BEA 2024 regional price parity. The US $77.0k figure is BEA national PCPI (RPP = 100), not the unweighted mean of the 50 state proxies. Sources: Census ACS 2024 1-year; Census Annual Survey of School System Finances FY2024; BEA SAINC/SARPP/SAGDP; Pew FY2024 state revenue shares; BLS Union Members 2025; NCSL; Ballotpedia (Oct 2026); FEMA NRI v1.20; CRS R42346. Full tables, per-state matrix, and top-vs-weak mirror tests are in the companion study.