Why the South is the worst place to live in the U.S. — in 10 charts

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Sheesh - why not use an incendiary headline next time?

YMMV.

Why the South is the worst place to live in the U.S. — in 10 charts

Wonkblog
By Roberto A. Ferdman October 7 at 9:00 AM

Looking for a healthier lifestyle? You might want to move to Hawaii. More educated people? You should probably try Montana, Vermont, or Minnesota. Better job prospects? North Dakota. And if you want the best quality of living, pound for pound, the best place to live is New Hampshire.

But if you're trying to avoid places where all of the above are (well) below average, you'll want to stay clear of the South.

That's according to a new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which ranked all 50 states (plus the District) according to nine different measures of well-being: health, safety, housing, access to broadband, civic engagement, education, jobs, environment, and income.

The study assigned a value from zero to ten (ten being a perfect score, zero being an embarrassment) for each of the nine measures. While no state was perfect, New Hampshire, which scored 77.6, is easily the best anyone can do in the United States, followed by Minnesota (76.2), Vermont (74.8), Iowa (72.9); and North Dakota (72.4).
....

Roberto A. Ferdman is a reporter for Wonkblog covering food, economics, immigration and other things. He was previously a staff writer at Quartz.

[EX500rider]

1. Tell them thanks but I'll still pick Fla over N Dakota..

N Dakota:


Fla:

[Logical]

8. Wow, are you missing the point. nt

[former9thward]

11. Ahh, no the poster is not missing the point.

Just not endorsing yours.

[EX500rider]

13. No not really...

My internet is fast enough..
New College was a great school..
Like my job..
The beach town I live in is virtually crime free..
My dad bought the house in 1948 for $3000..
My health is fine..
The sea breezes are fairly pollution free..

Don't know how "politically engaged" my neighbors are though..

My point was you have to take in the scenery and weather also.

[gcomeau]

31. Yeah, really...

You are trying to counter a widespread statistical evaluation with personal anecdote and statement of preference. That is most certainly missing the point.

[EX500rider]

35. No, not really..

...nobody lives in any widespread statistical evaluation...but in a specific place.

The specific place I live in does well on all those criteria. (except I have no idea how "politically engaged" my neighbors are , nor do i care)

And leaving out scenery and weather patterns seems like a serious fault in their evaluation.

Unless there is a part of North Dakota I can do this year round..?

[gcomeau]

36. Yes... *everyone* lives in a specific place.

And that specific place is different for every single one of those individuals so using individual anecdotes to talk about regional attributes is, I repeat, missing the point.

So you, personally, like the one little chunk of Florida you're inhabiting. Congratulations! Good for you. That is not in any way shape or form a counter to the overall evaluation of the region that was performed any more than the doofuses posting about how it's cold outside their house this afternoon are counters to global warming observations. Global warming isn't talking about the the instantaneous evaluation of the temperature outside individuals houses and evaluations of regional performance against reasonable metrics are not talking about whether you personally like your neighborhood.

[EX500rider]

37. Any metric that puts North Dakota at the top of the list has issues..

.....yes tons of jobs.....in the oil fracking industry.

Welcome to North Dakota! Are you bored yet?

[gcomeau]

38. It put it there for specific metrics, not overall.

And your personal expert opinion on the matter is duly noted and weighted against the weight of the gigantic database of data used to compile those ratings.

[EX500rider]

39. Not mention how worthless is a metric with no entertainment/culture values?

How many concert tours put North Dakota on their tour?
Ballets?
Symphonies?
How many world class art museums or theme parks?
They have a Dali Museum?
A Ringling Art Museum?
A Bush Gardens?

I think I'll keep the Dry Tortugas and they can keep where the buffalo roam...lol

[gcomeau]

40. It's astonishing how you seem to think...

...that argument by .jpg is somehow giving your statements weight here.


And again. North Dakota was rated at the top only for SPECIFIC METRICS NOT OVERALL.


Sheesh.

[EX500rider]

41. So as long as you don't care about entertainment, culture, weather,

or not working in the oil industry it's a great place?

[gcomeau]

44. FFS...

...what part of SPECIFIC METRICS, NOT OVERALL is not penetrating your noggin?

[EX500rider]

45. My point was they seemed to have cherry picked the metrics and left out some important ones...

...assuming you have a preference in art, culture and weather of course.

[SomethingFishy]

10. That's funny, I used to live in Florida and I remember this:

Just kidding, a little... My family still lives there, it's just too freakin hot for me..

[tabbycat31]

17. See I find that snow very pretty

I spent a lot of the winter in Maine and the scenery there looked like something that you would see on a Christmas card. They don't even salt the roads in Maine (like the picture), but it's fine to drive on them because people have the cars (4 wheel drive) and know how to drive on snowy roads.

If I had DU synched to my phone, I'd post a few pics.

And besides about the only thing that Florida did right in the last decade or so was arrest Justin Bieber.

[TBA]

23. Lifelong Floridian Here

And I've never seen a beach that looks like that.

Most Florida beached are crowded and dirty.

[EX500rider]

25. What coast you on?

That pic is from the Keys...

However Ft DeSoto here in Pinellas County looks like this:

[FLPanhandle]

27. You must live on the Atlantic coast

How could a life long Floridian not know about the panhandle Gulf Coast beaches. Usually rated among the best in the world

[hifiguy]

2. Well I live in Minnesota, so

Obviously weather was not a factor that was included in the calculus, though. Winter punishes us on a regular and lengthy basis for all the good things we have here in Lake Wobegon Land. Garrison Keillor never fails to remind us that weather-based suffering makes us stronger, better people. I am less sure of the truth of that the older I get.

[frazzled]

3. Better job prospects in North Dakota?

For what? If you're a fracking engineer? Honestly, I can't imagine that people are flocking to North Dakota for jobs in an entire host of fields.

And New Hampshire, really? I spent a lot of time in New Hampshire when I lived in Massachusetts, mostly canvassing in different towns and cities door to door. Um, you couldn't get me to live in New Hampshire, thank you very much. Nice autumn colors, though.

Minnesota's great, and deserves to be up there on that list. (Or at least the Twin Cities.) It's highly educated and has tons of art, music, and theater institutions. Which, of course, is something not on any of these charts. Wyoming? Not so much.

Where you like to live is an individual choice. Larger, more populous states and cities have a much wider range of demographics, and so tend to do poorly by such metrics because high and low balance out to average. It doesn't mean you might not want to live there.

[marlakay]

24. Woman I work with just got offered sales manager job of new hotel there

I said why would you want to move there? She is a christian republican and still decided not to take job. Too much winter, wind and long hours at new job.

[mnhtnbb]

4. The problem with these state ranking studies is that every state is not uniform.

There are towns--and counties--within states that are very unlike the
rest of the entire state. I live in one of them: Chapel Hill, Orange County, NC.
I imagine we'd score pretty high on all of the measures in this study.

You couldn't pay me to live anywhere that I had to shovel snow. Even in North Carolina
I have to occasionally take out the broom to brush snow off the steps, but, nothing's perfect.

I do wish the Republicans hadn't taken over the state--but we'll get control back from
them in the next few years. And then it will take us a lot longer to fix the mess they've
made and damage they've done in just two years.

[NRaleighLiberal]

12. indeed! just starting a joyous two weeks at Ocracoke

Registered Dems outnumber the other side here at least 3:1!

Oh yes...and it is spectacular!

[mnhtnbb]

19. Have a great time.

We're going to Emerald Isle next week.

[dixiegrrrrl]

18. thank you...

You could not pay me to live in any of the 4 cities in this state.
but I chose to live in the small towns of this state, actually 3 of them, over the years.
And since 80% of the people in this state do live outside the cities, there must be a reason.

Worse problem we have is low level drugs, in certain areas, and a nasty habit of the younger set to speed on the country roads,
free from the encumbrance of a seat belt, or common sense, until they find a solid object to run into.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

5. Texas.

The big cities in Texas are liberal. Even Dallas is being dragged into the twentieth century. There's plenty of culture in Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. Fort Worth has the Van Cliburn Piano Competition and three excellent musea.

The rural parts are extremely conservative, even teabaggy and Confederate-flag-waving, though. The Democrats have given up on any county organizations in many parts of the state. There are 254 counties.

[alarimer]

32. Yes, it has the very best (Austin) and the very worst (any rural town, pretty much).

I guess you could probably say the same for any southern state.

But statistically, by any measure, southern states do worse than others on measures pertaining to education, health care, life expectancy.
They are stingy in terms of services like food stamps and unemployment. They also tend to be states with lower average wages (but also lower costs of living, so that balances I suppose), lower percentage of unionization.

When I think of places I like to live, I think of places with culture and things to do. Some cities in Texas have that, as you mentioned, some do not. Corpus Christi comes to mind. It SHOULD be on the list of good places to live, being so close to the beach. What I found, when I lived there, was a place that was relentlessly average. It was a place where kids go away to college and never come back, moving to any of the cities you mentioned. It has little in they way of decent employment for professionals. I think geography plays a role. It is not on the way to anywhere, or close enough to other places to attract people who might commute to work. The city tried everything to draw in business, but all they managed to attract were big box stores, which provide only minimum-wage jobs. Aside from the refineries and military bases, there was not much happening there.

[KurtNYC]

6. These ranking are somewhat useless

No one lives in the average of a whole state but rather in a community. Whether a state has high unemployment or low, an individual needs only the job(s) that are right for them. Same for broadband and all that; it doesn't matter what the average access is.

The imaginary people that these rankings seem to envision, who would move to an area to enjoy its "health, safety, housing, access to broadband, civic engagement, education, jobs, environment, and income" are takers. A good community is sustained by people who are there for the long run and expect to work on maintaining or improving the community, givers.

[HereSince1628]

14. I think that's true, but averages aren't about solipsism they are about populations

One of America's great difficulties is a thing which once was an amazing strength... the lack of capacity to be 'in it together'

One could argue that an average needn't be a value that is actually present in a dataset. But the notion of the middle, a level of experience met by at least half a populations does say something about a population

[KurtNYC]

16. "notion of the middle" -- very well stated

point taken

[cali]

21. exactly. silly stuff as far as picking a state to live in.

[lpbk2713]

7. "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Everyone has their favorite source to base their "preferred" statistics on.

[Little Star]

9. I live in MA and you couldn't pay me to live in NH.....

Way to Red State for me. Vermont, well that's another thing.

[elias49]

15. Yeah, I live in NH and despite all the great 'stats', I'd prefer to be in

Western Mass!
Great public school system.
It's 'blue'.
And it has Boston! Which is my favorite city.

[meaculpa2011]

20. New York is great, but...

we're heading south very soon.

Love the diversity, the energy and the cultural life.

Hate winter. Hate traffic. Hate paying $14,000 per year in property tax and $35,000 per year in insurance of all types.

In NC we'll cut our property tax to $1,200 per year and our insurance bill by half.

[ileus]

22. And here I am stuck too far North..I can only dream of SC or FL.

Worst part about my end of Virginia is the crappy assed winter.


Pretty much if you're north of NC life starts sucking in the late fall.

[get the red out]

26. Makes sense

People in the south vote against their own interests time after time and that certainly contributes to these statistics.

[Hortensis]

33. Yup! Like other conservatives, they vote what they believe to be their values and principles.

They REALLY believe social programs designed to assist those who haven't solved their own problems tend to be counterproductive and harmful to society and that rewarding those whose worthiness is demonstrated by their prosperity is good for society.

A very limited and rigid view, of course, that sets them up for the very sophisticated handlers who hype up these beliefs and redefine every issue to get them to vote their values the desired way. I.e., to help keep that vacuum going on high...

[FLPanhandle]

28. That must explain the exodus of folks from Florida to North Dakota

LOL.

[yallerdawg]

29. As a long time resident of Sweet Home Alabama...

these charts confirm just one thing - "Thank God for Mississippi!" (except for last Saturday, of course).

[SheilaT]

30. I always hate these things that

rate best or worst places to live. For one thing, people have different opinions as to what makes a place desirable or even even just livable.

And sometimes, the supposed best places are a suburb of some major metropolitan area, and that needs to be taken into consideration, because chances are that metro area has a very strong affect on quality of life in the suburb.

There are places you couldn't pay me to live. But I'm not very likely to name them, simply because every time I think to myself, That place is just AWFUL! Why would ANYONE live there? someone here posts a nice piece about how wonderful that place is and how much they like it.

I currently live in Santa Fe, NM. The single thing I like best here is our amazing night skies. I love all the stars I can see almost every single night of the year because we usually have clear skies to begin with. We're at 7,000 feet, and this small city just does not generate much light pollution. If I ever decide to relocate, I will think long and hard about giving this up.

And that's something I've never seen included in any measure of quality of life.

[LuvNewcastle]

42. The skies would be a big plus for me.

I star-gaze when I can, but I'm unable to do much because it's often cloudy here on the gulf coast and we have some light pollution here, too. At least I was able to watch the eclipse this morning. I've heard lots of good things about Santa Fe. That high desert climate would be enough for me to relocate out there.

[SheilaT]

46. I love the climate here.

You'd probably think our winters are cold since you live on the gulf coast, but they really are not. The official word is that we get 300 days of sunshine a year, and I can tell you that there are probably not more than ten days in a year in which the sun isn't out at least part of the time. I like the dry. I like it that I can be outside as much as I want, because even when we do get cold weather here, it's simply not that cold and in the middle of the day the sun will almost always be shining. Our hot isn't too terribly hot (although I think anything above about 72 degrees is too hot) and it really does cool off at night up here.

If you live in Albuquerque, a couple of thousand feet lower and a big city, you pretty much must have a/c. Up here, not necessarily, and I don't have it. I did break down and buy a room fan for the room I spend much of my time in, and in the main room I have a ceiling fan.

Our skies are generally fantastic, any time of day or night. In August I visited my son who lives in Portland, OR. That's a nice city, and I had a great trip but realized by the end of it I hadn't seen any stars to speak of.

For now, I'll stay here.

[CherokeeDem]

34. Keep telling everyone that....

leave the South to those of us who love it.

Every location has both good and bad elements... and it depends on what someone wants. Right now, I live in Kentucky... crime has risen dramatically in the last year and the past winter was horrendous... but Lexington is a beautiful little city with affordable housing, low unemployment rate and a lot of culture. All depends how you choose to assign value.

Me.... I love the South... despite it's faults... faults different from those 'other' great places to live.

[Spider Jerusalem]

43. You could probably do "why the US is the worst place to live in the developed world, in 10 charts".