While the welfare rolls among mainstream Mormons in Utah are tiny, the same cannot be said for the fundamentalist Mormons of Colorado City, Arizona. A reader points to the following passage in Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven:
In 2002, seventy-eight percent of the town’s residents living on the Arizona side received food stamps. Currently the residents of Colorado City receive eight dollars in government services for every dollar they pay in taxes; by comparison, residents in the rest of Mohave County, Arizona, receive just over a dollar in services per tax dollar paid.
… To avoid prosecution [for polygamy], typically men in Colorado City will legally marry only the first of their wives; subsequent wives, although “spiritually married,” to their husband by Uncle Rulon, thus remain single mothers in the eyes of the state. This has the added benefit of allowing the enormous families in town to qualify for welfare and other forms of government assistance. Despite the fact that Uncle Rulon and his followers regard the governments of Arizona, Utah and the United States as Satanic forces out to destroy the UEP, their polygamous community receives more than $6 million a year in public funds.
The Dish 