Louisiana Ranks Really Low in ‘Best States to Live’

Using a metric of 52 key indicators of livability, Louisiana ranked as one of the worst states to live in in the U.S.

People moving out of state was at an all-time-low last year at only 8.4%. Does that mean we may see an surge of people moving from one state to another in the near future? Possibly. Have you ever thought about living in another state? How would you go about deciding which state to move to, if you wanted to and had the choice?

Thankfully, WalletHub did a lot of the work for you in giving us the 2022 Best States to Live In.

How to Figure Out the Best State to Live

How would you even go about figuring out the best state to live in? WalletHub used 52 key indicators of livability to reach their metrics. Those key indicators are things like housing costs, percent of population in poverty, crime rates, average hours of work per week, percentage of adults in fair or poor health, education, and many more.

Let's start with the actual best places to live, according to WalletHub's metrics. The top five best states to live in the U.S. are:

1. Massachusetts
2. New Jersey
3. New York
4. Idaho
5. Virginia

Some of those may be no surprise, and some of those (looking at you Idaho) might be a big surprise to you.

Now, we have to look at the bottom of the list. Where Louisiana sits at an abysmal 48 of 50. Third worst.

The bottom five are:

• New Mexico
• Arkansas
• Louisiana
• Alaska
• Mississippi

Why Does Louisiana Rank so Low in Best State to Live in?

It seems that in Louisiana, most of us work more, have less education, don't get raises, all while living in poverty and poor health.

Here is where Louisiana scores in some of the key indicators:

• 33^rd – Housing Costs
• 25^th – Homeownership Rate
• 48^th – % of Population in Poverty
• 47^th – Income Growth
• 31^st – % of Insured Population
• 47^th – % of Adults in Fair or Poor Health
• 46^th – Avg. Weekly Work Hours
• 28^th – Restaurants per Capita
• 50^th – Crime Rate

It looks like crime rate might be the only thing that we scored dead last in. So, we got that going for us.

I guess we have some work to do!

Here's a bit of what we just talked about in video form, if you'd rather soak in the info that way: