The List: State Debt Levels

Much like yesterday's mini-post on the health care system, today's effort is not necessarily a 'list,' but its highly digestible format nonetheless renders it 'List' worthy. Today, we look at the per capita debt bills in individual states. For clarity, this is entirely separate from each citizen's share of the federal debt.

UPDATE: Based on our site traffic statistics, it appears that state debt levels are a very hot topic among internet surfers. Therefore, we thought it might be helpful to provide a few more good links for those who stumble across this post. Also found above, here is a CNN Money page with an interactive map which allows users to see per capita debt levels, while readers can visit the article which linked to the map here.

Meanwhile, this Forbes map, while a bit more dated, provides slightly more information out of the same format. Here is an interesting page with statistics as well as functionality allowing users to make their own charts. Finally, for those with an economist's dismal sense of humor, we stumbled across this Boston Fed report from 1997 with summaries of the economic status of each the states of the New England region. The real laughs come on pages 5, 6 and 7 where readers can read about budget surpluses in places like Massachusetts and Connecticut.