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

On this page: The lifelines are reaching us and What the extra money actually is

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. The checks arrive. In 2024 the residents of the typical majority Black county in America received $17,284 per person in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits, food aid and other government benefits. The typical county everywhere else received $15,082 ^[1][2]. That is about $2,200 more per person, and it reaches families from the Mississippi Delta to Prince George's County, Maryland, from the Alabama Black Belt to the parishes of north Louisiana.

Before going further, one plain fact about who this story covers. A county counts here as majority Black when more than half of its residents are Black alone in the Census Bureau's 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey. There are 96 such counties, home to 3.9 million Black residents, which is about 1 in 10 of the 40.9 million Black Americans counted that way ^[2]. Most of us live in places like Wayne County, Michigan, where 652,168 Black residents make up 36.8 percent of the county, or Cook County, Illinois, or Harris County, Texas ^[2]. So this is a story about places, the counties where Black residents are the majority, and not a story about Black Americans as a whole.

The lifelines are reaching us

I want to start with what is working, because it is real and it is ours. These programs are lifelines, and the record shows they do reach our counties. Veterans benefits are the clearest example of something earned. In 2022 the typical majority Black county received $639 per resident in veterans benefits, against $563 in the typical county elsewhere ^[1][2]. In some places it is far more. Richmond County, Georgia, home to Augusta, received $1,607 per resident. Macon County, Alabama, home to Tuskegee, received $1,332. Portsmouth, Virginia received $1,235, and Montgomery County, Alabama received $1,227 ^[1][2]. Every one of those dollars began with someone who served and someone who helped them file the claim.

Other counties show strength in a different way, by needing less. Prince George's County, Maryland is home to more Black residents than any majority Black county in the country, 564,636 people, and its median household income is $101,798 ^[2]. Its residents received $10,712 per person in government benefits in 2024, well below the typical county in the nation ^[1][2]. Henry, Douglas and Rockdale Counties outside Atlanta tell the same story, with median household incomes from $77,247 to $83,146 and benefits from $11,237 to $12,497 per resident in 2024 ^[1][2]. Lower benefits in those places are not neglect. They are what it looks like when more families are earning enough that the safety net is not carrying them.

What the extra money actually is

That last point is the key to the whole picture, and it took me a while to see it. If more money reached majority Black counties because more was being invested in them, it would show up everywhere, including in the benefits people earn through work. It does not. In 2022, the latest year with program detail, Social Security came to $4,268 per resident in the typical majority Black county and $4,340 in the typical county elsewhere, about the same ^[1][2]. The share of residents 65 or older is about the same too, 19.7 percent against 20.1 percent in the typical county ^[2]. Medicare was a little higher, $3,642 against $3,246 ^[1][2]. In 2019, before the pandemic changed the rules for food aid and Medicaid, Social Security came to $3,742 per resident in the typical majority Black county and $3,743 elsewhere, the same to the dollar ^[1][2].

The difference sits in the programs that rise when incomes are lower. Medicaid, counting the federal and state shares together, came to $3,106 per resident in the typical majority Black county and $2,377 elsewhere. Income support, which includes Supplemental Security Income, tax credits for working families, cash assistance and food aid, came to $2,326 against $1,244. Food aid through SNAP alone came to $732 against $313, more than twice as much ^[1][2]. The pattern was there before the pandemic too. In 2019 Medicaid came to $2,579 against $1,790, and income support to $1,537 against $736 ^[1][2]. Put another way, Medicaid and income support were about 36 cents of every benefit dollar in the typical majority Black county in 2022, and about 27 cents in the typical county elsewhere ^[1]. The typical majority Black county also had a median household income of $43,707, against $66,026 in the typical county elsewhere ^[2].

You can see this play out across the map. In Baltimore, 57 cents of every benefit dollar in 2022 came through Medicaid and income support. In East Carroll Parish and Madison Parish in Louisiana it was 54 and 51 cents. In Phillips County, Arkansas it was 49 cents, and in Holmes, Humphreys and Coahoma Counties in the Mississippi Delta it was 40 to 45 cents ^[1]. In Shelby County, Tennessee it was 34 cents. In Henry County, Georgia it was 21 cents, the lowest of any majority Black county ^[1].

So here is what I take from it. More money, in this measure, largely measures need. It is not investment. Medicaid keeps a grandmother in her doctor's care, SNAP keeps food on the table and SSI keeps a disabled neighbor housed, and none of that should be taken lightly or taken away. These dollars keep families afloat. They do not build wealth, open a business, train a workforce or put a new roof on a school, and a county can receive more of them every year while standing still.

On this page: Where are the dollars that build? and What changed for food aid

Where are the dollars that build?

That brings me to the question I think we should be asking. The money that builds a place moves differently. It goes to institutions and businesses: a city government that wins a transportation grant, a college that wins a research award, a housing authority, a health center, a local company hired to do federal work. USAspending.gov, run by the U.S. Treasury, records these awards, and it is a second measure that has to be kept separate from the first. It counts what the federal government committed to pay in its fiscal year, by where the work happens. The benefits figures above count what residents received in a calendar year, by where they live. The two overlap in ways that cannot be untangled, so SourceLine never adds them together.

In federal fiscal year 2025, which ran from October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025, the typical majority Black county had $8,380 per resident in federal awards placed there, and the typical county elsewhere had $8,115 ^[3][2]. Most of that, in both groups, is direct payments to individuals: $7,299 per resident in the typical majority Black county and $7,020 elsewhere ^[3][2]. When I set those payments aside and looked at the two kinds of awards that go to organizations, the picture split in two. Grants, the money that goes to local governments, colleges, housing authorities, health centers and nonprofits, came to $535 per resident in the typical majority Black county and $402 elsewhere, after taking out money paid to state agencies that the state, not the county, decides how to spend ^[3][2]. Our institutions are applying, and they are winning. Federal contracts, the money the government pays businesses to do work, came to $31 per resident in the typical majority Black county and $77 elsewhere, less than half ^[3][2]. Fourteen of the 96 majority Black counties had no federal contract work recorded in fiscal year 2025 at all ^[3].

That is the gap I would put in front of anyone who decides. Grants matter, and they help an institution serve people for a year or two. A contract is different. A business gets paid for work, hires people, meets a payroll and grows, and that is the kind of money that builds wealth that stays in a place. Grants and contracts together came to about the same in both groups, $705 and $700 per resident ^[3][2]. So what I see is not federal money avoiding our counties. It is building money that arrives mostly as grants to our institutions, with very little arriving as work for our businesses.

Georgia, where SourceLine also has the awards by recipient, shows what that building money looks like when it lands. Albany State University, a historically Black university in Dougherty County, received $58.0 million in federal awards of its own in fiscal year 2025. In Augusta, the Augusta University research institute received $63.6 million and the city's housing authority received $57.5 million ^[3].

What changed for food aid

The food aid figures earlier in this story are from 2022, the latest year with program detail, and the rules have changed since. H.R. 1, the budget law signed July 4, 2025 (Public Law 119-21), extends SNAP's time limit for adults without young children to ages 55 to 64 and to parents whose youngest child is 14 or older. Since October 1, 2026 states pay 75 percent of the cost of running SNAP, up from half, and from 2028 states with higher error rates also pay 5 to 15 percent of the benefits ^[5][6]. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the work rules will lower SNAP participation by about 2.4 million people in an average month over 2025 to 2034, and the state share of benefits will cut federal SNAP spending by about $41 billion from 2028 to 2034. These are estimates, not counts ^[5].

Who pays: SNAP benefits are paid with federal tax dollars, and running the program is now paid mostly with state tax dollars. Residents weigh that shift differently, and SourceLine takes no side.

The Seattle Medium, a Black-owned newspaper, reported on Oct. 29, 2026 that Rep. Marilyn Strickland, a Democrat from Washington, and local food bank leaders warned of growing hunger as the cuts take hold (reporting, Seattle Medium). At an Oct. 21 press conference her office said Washington had more than 57,000 fewer SNAP participants since the law passed while food bank use rose 9 percent, and the Thurston County Food Bank said its customers had grown 25 percent since January (reporting, The Chronicle). Those figures are theirs, not SourceLine's.

The monthly counts since the law passed, for the nation and every state, are in SourceLine's story Who lost SNAP.

Who decides, and what we can do

If we want more of the money that builds, it helps to know whose hand is on it. Congress writes the formulas and sets the amounts for Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP and veterans benefits, and it decides how much goes into the grant programs that institutions compete for. Federal agencies decide which applications win those grants, which businesses win contracts, and where offices and installations go. State governments decide Medicaid eligibility within federal rules and decide how much of the federal money they receive moves on to counties, cities and school systems. Closest to home, county commissions, housing authorities, colleges, health centers and veterans service officers decide whether to apply, whether to help residents claim what they have earned, and whether to report what they did with it.

That last group is the one we can reach this month. Start by opening your county's page on SourceLine and looking at both measures side by side: what reached your neighbors and what reached your institutions. Then take one question to each level. Ask your county commission which competitive federal grants the county applied for last year and which it won. Ask your state legislators how much of the federal money the state received last year reached your county, and by what formula. Ask your member of Congress which grant programs your county's institutions are eligible for and have not used. Ask your county's economic development office or chamber of commerce how many local businesses are registered at SAM.gov, the federal system a business must join before it can win a federal contract, and who is helping the rest get there. If you know a veteran who has never filed a claim, connect them with the county veterans service officer, because that money is earned. Write the answers down and keep them. When next year's figures come out, we will be able to see whether anything moved, and who moved it.

Facts in this story come from the official federal and Census records listed below. The year of each figure is shown with it. Public agencies release data on their own schedules, and SourceLine updates each figure as soon as it is published.