The editors of U.S. News and World Report have published their 2019 Best States ranking of U.S. states, which purportedly measures how well states are performing for their respective citizens.
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| Provo, Utah |
The editors use a cumulative approach whereby the editors take 71 measures, "metrics" in today's puffery language, and place those measures in eight categories.
The editors rely upon the stupidity of the crowd to weight the scores of those eight categories based upon a survey of preferences. WIthin each of the eight categories, the editors assign equal weighting to scores of sub-categories (see the bottom for the categories).
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| Duluth, Minnesota |
Since the stats nerds at U.S. News have created an index score for each metric for each state by assigning 100 points to the state that had the highest measure ("metric"), and 0 points to the state with the worst measure while indexing proportionally the states between, we can take the rankings to mean the scores and thus create a better ranking system using their data.
Rather than follow the politically-driven categories of the USNWR editors, I created these: Residents Quality Score, Living Quality Score, Economy Score, Governance Risk Score, Labor Score, Business Relocation Score, Personal Relocation Score.
Residents Quality Score
The Residents Quality Score reflects a population with the maturity to acquire marketable skills, a desire to work, with good self-esteem and an unwillingness to abuse others through crime.
Here are the measures taken from the Best States study, which comprise the Residents Quality Score.
- Low Poverty Rate
- Labor Force Participation
- Mental Health
- Low Obesity Rate
- Low Smoking Rate
- Low Suicide Rate
- Low Incarceration Rate
Living Quality Score
The Living Quality Score reflects factors that effect the lives of the residents. Most would like house prices to be in line with their incomes, to live without crime, to have much opportunity to switch jobs, to pay low prices for quality electricity and Internet, to drink safe water and breathe safe air while driving on good roads and over good bridges.
Here are the measures taken from the Best States study, which comprise the Living Quality Score.
- Housing Affordability
- Low Property Crime Rate
- Low Violent Crime Rate
- Low Unemployment Rate
- Electricity Price
- Ultra-Fast Internet Access
- Road Quality
- Bridge Quality
- Power Grid Reliability
- Drinking Water Quality
- Low Industrial Toxins
Economy Score
The Economy Score reflects the state of the economy for each state. More households with higher incomes means more spending. More new businesses forming means more jobs and a wider, more stable tax base. Low tax burdens means individuals can better decide by voting with dollars in marketplaces what products should be provided. More jobs means greater independence and thus greater respect for all.
Here are the measures taken from the Best States study, which comprise the Economy Score.
- Household Income
- Entrepreneurship
- Low Tax Burden
- Job Growth
Governance Risk Score
The Governance Risk Score reflects the exposure individuals have to the past actions of the lawgivers of the various states. In many states, lawgivers have overpaid government workers for decades and have made outlandish contractual obligations to pay outrageously oversized pensions.
Residents in states with shaky fiscal positions could find themselves facing outsized tax hikes for which they did not plan.
Here are the measures taken from the Best States study, which comprise the Governance Risk Score.
- Pension Fund Liability
- Budget Balancing
- Liquidity
Labor Quality Score
In many ways, a labor quality score is another measure of the quality of citizens in a state. However, that comes with a caveat when using education as a proxy for potentially skilled workers. Many states socially promote students and thus attain high graduation rates. However, test scores a bit harder to fake.
- Educational Attainment
- High School Graduation Rate
- Naep Math Scores
- Naep Reading Scores
Business Relocation Score
Personal Relocation Score
Having good neighbors, good surroundings, good opportunities to work and having low exposure to lawgivers should make for a good life for most anyone. That is what the Personal Relocation Score tries to capture.
Relocation Summary
USNWR Best States Rank vs The True Dollar Journal vs Reality
By taking out the questionable measures, the True Dollar Journal ranking varies from the U.S. News ranking for most states until near the bottom.
Interestingly, Net Migration data from the Best States study does not support either the U.S. News rankings nor the True Dollar Journal overall rankings. Likely this is so because many relocate to retire in such states as Florida, South Carolina, Nevada and Arizona.
Some Caution
Some states suffer because such states have one major city, which skews data and pulls down the entire state. The city of Detroit plagues the other residents of the state of Michigan.
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| Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan |
Rejected Measures
I rejected the following measures used by the editors of the USNWR to comprise their Best State rankings. Some are unsound, for example, the Cost of Living measure does not account for purchasing power. So even though prices might be higher in some states, higher incomes offset higher prices and those who live there come out ahead.
Other measures are political such as most of the poverty measures. Those who end up in relative poverty do so because they lack suitable skills to sell in the marketplaces of work.
Most of the medical related measures, wrongly called "healthcare," fail to measure health but instead are proxies for how sickly a population is.
The college graduation rates are measures of how long it takes college enrollees to graduate within overly generous time frames.
Here is the list of rejected measures:
- Cost of Living
- Low Food Insecurity
- Gini Index
- 2-Year College Graduation Rate
- 4-Year College Graduation Rate
- Low Debt at Graduation
- Tuition and Fees
- College Readiness
- Preschool Enrollment
- Least Juvenile Incarceration
- Equality in Jailing
- Patent Creation
- Top Company Headquarters
- Venture Capital
- Commute Time
- Public Transit Usage
- Renewable Energy Usage
- Broadband Access
- Urban Air Quality
- Low Pollution Health Risk
- Health Care Affordability
- Health Insurance Enrollment
- Adult Dental Visits
- Adult Wellness Visits
- Child Dental Visits
- Child Wellness Visits
- Hospital Quality
- Medicare Quality
- Nursing Home Quality
- Preventable Admissions
- Low Infant Mortality Rate
- Low Mortality Rate
- Government Credit Rating Score
Best States Categories
- Health Care: 16%
- Health Care Access: 33%
- Health Care Quality: 33%
- Public Health: 33%
- Education: 15.8%
- Higher Education: 50%
- Pre-K - 12: 50%
- Economy: 13.8%
- Business Environment: 33%
- Growth: 33%
- Employment: 33%
- Infrastructure: 12.9%
- Energy: 33%
- Internet Access: 33%
- Transportation: 33%
- Opportunity: 12.7%
- Affordability: 33%
- Economic Opportunity: 33%
- Equality: 33%
- Fiscal Stability: 10.5%
- Long-term: 50%
- Short-term: 50%
- Crime & Corrections: 9.9%
- Corrections: 50%
- Public Safety: 50%
- Natural Environment: 8.4%
- Natural Environment: 50%
- Social Environment: 50%
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