New York/Florida Comparison: The Contrast Becomes Ever More Dramatic

Among the larger states, the two that are closest to each other in population and demographics are New York and Florida. According to the latest U.S. Census data (from July 1, 2024), the population of New York was 19,867,248, while the population of Florida was 23,372,215. More recent estimates from a source called World Population Review put New York’s 2025 population at 19,997,100 (an increase of about 130,000 on the year), and Florida’s at 23,839,600 (an increase of about 467,000 over the same year).

Yet in terms of the approach to state government — taxing, spending, and government programs overall — there could not be a greater contrast than between these two states. And that contrast only grows stronger every year.

In recent weeks the two states have finalized their budgets for the 2025-26 fiscal years. Here is New York’s Fiscal Year 2026 Executive Budget Briefing Book. The budget was enacted in May. The total of the budget can be found in a table on page 21: $252 billion, an increase from $243.4 billion last year. Florida’s legislature just finished work on that state’s budget this week, on June 17. The total as enacted, according to the Tallahassee Democrat, is $115.1 billion. That’s actually a decrease of about $3 billion from the current year. And it’s still subject to line item vetoes from the governor, which could reduce it still further.

So how could Florida, a state with almost 20% more people than New York, have a state budget that’s less than half the size? Doing a little arithmetic, the Florida state government spends $4,828 per person, while New York’s spends $12,602 per person, more than two and a half times as much.

With the gap that large, you might think that New York must have some huge special categories of services that it provides and Florida does not. But that is not correct. Instead, New York spends vastly more to provide essentially the same services provided by Florida.

The two big categories in both states’ budgets are education and health care.

For PK-12 education, Florida’s state budget allocates approximately $31 billion. In New York, the figure is $37.4 billion (page 55 of briefing book). The difference becomes more striking when you take account of the fact that Florida has almost 2.9 million students enrolled in public preK-12 schools to New York’s approximately 2.4 million. New York pays approximately 50% more per student. Does it get anything for the much greater spending? According to the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) data pages, in the most recent tests in 2024, Florida scored somewhat higher than New York in both 4th grade reading and math, while New York scored somewhat higher in 8th grade reading and math. The differences do not look significant to me. For example, in 4th grade math, Florida gets a 243 to New York’s 234. In 8th grade reading, New York gets 257 to Florida’s 253.

But healthcare, and particularly Medicaid, is where the really big numbers pop out. From New York’s briefing book, page 68:

Total Medicaid and Essential Plan spending is expected to be $123.8 billion in FY 2026.

That’s more than Florida’s entire state budget for everything! The best number I can find for a comparable Florida spending figure for Medicaid (from the Florida Policy Institute) is $34.7 billion — less than a third of New York’s spending for a 20% larger population. The difference is in part due to New York’s higher enrollment (7 million versus 5.4 million), reflecting a complete lack of discipline in allowing people to sign up; and in part due to New York adopting every possible bell and whistle of Medicaid benefits, most famously paying hundreds of thousands of family members as caregivers for their parents and spouses.

Is New York’s population notably healthier than Florida’s? Not that I can determine. Life expectancy figures seem to have swung back and forth over the past few years, as Covid deaths went up first in New York and then later in Florida. I don’t think that Medicaid spending had anything to do with that. For our almost $90 billion additional Medicaid spending over Florida, you would think there would be something very dramatic to show for it; but there is not.

Everywhere you look, New York just has a cavalier attitude of lack of fiscal discipline and that spending more money is a good thing. As another point of comparison, this report from the Empire Center found that New York State executive agencies had some 188,455 “full-time equivalent” employees in 2022. In Florida, this Politifact piece from January 2024 gives a figure of 164,829 — again for a substantially larger population. The point of the Politifact piece is to “fact check” a claim by Florida Governor DeSantis that Florida has the lowest ratio of state employees to population of all the states. Politifact ends up rating that “mostly true.”

Looking around at coverage of New York’s government spending in the local media, there is almost never any mention of the dramatic contrast to Florida. Florida is living proof that just being careful about spending and watching where every dollar goes can make a huge difference. It’s not so different from managing a family budget.