“All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.” – Benjamin Franklin
There are literally dozens of state rankings available online from scores of reputable sources such as WalletHub, U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, Fortune, 24/7 Wall Street, thrillest, BLACKTOWER, Kiplinger, MoneyRates, BestPlaces, Bankrate, MoneyWise, statista, U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, FBI Crime Statistics, FEMA Federal Disaster Data, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Events Database, Value Penguin Disaster Risk, EPA Air Quality Data, Current Results Weather and Science Facts, ZIPPIA, smartasset, World Population Review, Gallup State Well-Being Index, Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends, USA.com, and the Tax Foundation but each ranks states in their own way using their own criteria and data and rarely do they agree with each other on which are really the best states in the country to live in much less the best states for you.
To simplify things and personalize the results, I pulled over 130+ different recent state rankings (some of which I created myself with available state data) covering many key state characteristics and grouped them into twelve unique dimensions. I then averaged all the relevant state ranks for each category (very similar to how Real Clear Politics creates its RCP Poll Average) and arrived at a final state rank (1-50, with 1 being the best) for each key dimension. The last step is for you to personalize the rankings by assessing how important each dimension is to you (relative to each other) using the sliding bars below (left=Low and right=High). As you adjust the importance weights you will see that the final state ranks will change based on your preferences. The result is a list of states, based on over 130+ different key data sources, customized to what is important to YOU!
