Methodology
To identify the best and worst states to live in, 24/7 Wall St. created an index of 16 measures related to, or indicative of, quality of life.
Five of the index measures are from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2021 American Community Survey: 1. median household income; 2. the poverty rate; 3. the median home value; 4. the Gini index – a measure of income inequality; and 5. median annual housing costs as a percentage of household income, a measure of housing affordability.
We also considered two measures from County Health Rankings, a joint program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute: 1. average life expectancy at birth based on calculations from 2018-2020; and 2. the share of the population who live in an area with easy access to places for physical activity such as parks or recreation centers calculated from 2010 and 2021 data.
Two components of the index are from the FBI’s 2020 Uniform Crime Report, the latest comprehensive UCR. These two measures are 1. the violent crime rate – which is a measure of the number of rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, and homicides for every 100,000 people; and 2. the property crime rate, which is a measure of the number of burglaries, larceny thefts, and motor vehicle thefts for every 100,000 people.
We also considered four measures from four individual sources: 1. average daily sunlight over the period 1979 to 2011 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s North America Land Data Assimilation System; 2. public school per pupil expenditure for the 2018-2019 school year from the National Center for Education Statistics; 3. average daily concentration of particulate matter 2.5, or PM 2.5, a measure of air quality, in 2021 from the Environmental Protection Agency; and 4. the unemployment rate – not seasonally adjusted – for August 2022, the most recent monthly rate available, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Finally, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau we calculated three measures: 1. percent population change due to net migration from 2020 to 2021; 2. adults with bachelor’s degree or higher who moved to the state in 2021 as a percentage of the 25 and older population; and 3. the homeownership rate, or the share of housing units occupied by their owner.
