Skip to content
SourceLineThe Black Civic Data Platform

Our mission is to make sure Black communities are not simply informed about the decisions shaping our future, but equipped to help make those decisions. An informed community is a powerful community.

Stories

Money stories

Each story starts with the national record, then breaks it down to your state, county, city and address: how it affects you, who decides and who pays. Newest first.

Showing 1 of 17 stories. See every story

Federal money, county by county

Do majority Black counties get more federal money, and what does it build?

In 2024 the typical majority Black county received $17,284 in benefits per resident. Most of the extra is help tied to need, not money that builds.

I went into this question expecting to find our counties shortchanged. That is the story many of us have been told, and in some parts of the federal budget it is true. But when I looked at the money that actually reaches the people who live in a county, the first thing the record showed was something else.

Inside: The lifelines are reaching us · What the extra money actually is · Where are the dollars that build? · What changed for food aid · Who decides, and what we can do · Where you live

Read the story › October 29, 2026 · 8 minute read

About these figures

Every figure on this page shows the year it describes. Public agencies release their numbers on their own schedules, often a year or more after the work of counting is done. The Census Bureau, for example, publishes its five year community survey each December, and the national reading test is given every two years. That is why some figures are not from this year. SourceLine updates each one as soon as the agency publishes it.

For some counties and small towns, SourceLine has not found meeting records online. Where it has not, we add them as they become available. A page that says SourceLine hasn’t updated a record yet means exactly that.