2023-11-29 15:42:40
Are you getting restless and looking for a new place to live? 2024 could be the year of a big change. After all, there are 50 states to choose from, with such variety that sometimes you might even feel like you’ve relocated to another country. Each year, WalletHub analyzes the states across various metrics corresponding to liveability—the things we want to access and enjoy where we live. Those 51 metrics fell under the categories of affordability, economy, education & health, quality of life and safety.
For instance, under affordability, there were five submetrics including things like median annual property taxes and median annual household income. Whoops, sorry, you caught me yawning. Let’s find some more fun metrics. How about miles of trails for biking and walking per total state land area? Or the number of bars per capita? You may be surprised by some thoughtful data points like the wealth gap (the difference between the highest and lowest quintiles of mean household income—hold on while I look up quintile), the share of live births with low birthweight, and the percentage of physically inactive adults. All very interesting! You will want to consult each of your five quintiles on this.
Before we get to the list, which is really why you’re here…you’re probably scanning past this paragraph right now to find out if your state is in the top 10…let’s instead talk about a few key takeaways. The state with the highest rate of home ownership? That’s West Virginia (the lowest is Rhode Island). Housing costs are lowest in Iowa and highest in Florida. North Dakota came in first under the economy category. California is the least affordable in general, while Alabama is the most affordable. #1 for safety was New Jersey.
We’ve stalled long enough. Drum roll, please. The best state in the whole entire United States is…it starts with an M…
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Massachusetts! It won last year, too. It is first this year for education and health and ranked high on all other categories except for affordability where it is #44. Its overall score was 61.67, whereas the score for the second state, New Jersey, was a very close 61.48. Massachusetts is beloved for its sports culture, impressive education offerings (teachers here are paid quite well as compared to other states, as reported by Boston.com), a beautiful seashore at Cape Cod—and of course the accompanying seafood—and being a state with a lot of historical interest sites.
Last year, New York came in third, but this year that honor goes to another “new” state, New Hampshire (overall score of 59.32), while New York slips to fourth place (59.31). Wyoming is in fifth place (59.16). Last year, Idaho and Virginia were fourth and fifth respectively. Take this all with that proverbial grain of salt: wherever you live is the best state. But just in case you want to be validated, here’s the full list:
1. Massachusetts
2. New Jersey
3. New Hampshire
4. New York
5. Wyoming
6. Florida
7. Virginia
8. Idaho
9. Wisconsin
10. Minnesota
11. Iowa
12. Maine
13. Illinois
14. Pennsylvania
15. Utah
16. North Dakota
17. Vermont
18. Colorado
19. Montana
20. Kansas
21. South Dakota
22. Indiana
23. Nebraska
24. California
25.Michigan
26. Connecticut
27. Maryland
28. Washington
29. Rhode Island
30. Georgia
31. North Carolina
32. Delaware
33. Ohio
34. Missouri
35. Hawaii
36. Tennessee
37. Texas
38. Oregon
39. Arizona
40. Nevada
41. West Virginia
42. Kentucky
43. Alabama
44. South Carolina
45. Arkansas
46. Oklahoma
47. Mississippi
48. Louisiana
49. Alaska
50. New Mexico
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