Do 47 percent of Americans really receive direct government aid?

Sort of, but they’re probably not the people Mitt Romney had in mind. About 49 percent of Americans live in households that receive some form of government benefits, according to the libertarian Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., based on data from 2010. Not all of those people, however, are dependent on those benefits, as Romney implied.

A significant proportion of government assistance comes in the form of Social Security and Medicare, for which eligibility is based on age rather than need. Considering only “means-tested” programs, such as food stamps, Medicaid and housing assistance, around 35 percent of Americans live in households that benefit from government assistance.

Romney complained about health care, food aid and housing assistance, in that order – and that’s precisely how the programs line up in terms of total beneficiaries. If you receive only one form of means-tested government assistance, it’s probably Medicaid. In 2010, 26 percent of Americans lived in households that received heath care benefits through the program. The next largest means-tested government aid program is food stamps. Fifteen percent of the U.S. population, or more than 46 million, receive help through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Around half that number participate in the Women, Infants and Children program, which also provides food aid.

Compared with Medicaid and food stamps, housing assistance is pretty rare. As of 2010, just 4 percent of Americans received rental assistance or lived in government-subsidized housing.

Health care assistance is far more common than food or housing aid because Medicaid isn’t really a poverty-relief program. A child in New York state, for example, may be eligible for government-funded health care if his family’s household income is less than four times the federal poverty level, or $92,200 for a family of four. Many other states offer Medicaid to adults and children at double or triple the poverty level. In North Dakota, the most restrictive Medicaid state, the income limit for child health insurance is 1.6 times the federal poverty level. By contrast, you can’t receive food stamps if your net income exceeds the federal poverty level. As for housing, New York, one of the more generous states, limits its Section 8 housing aid to families of four earning less than $38,400, less than half the maximum income for the state’s children’s health insurance.