There’s an interesting data set from McKinsey & Company that is used by U.S. News & World Report to rank states. You can find the state rankings here.
These lists seem to provide endless fascination. If you’re in the top 10, the lists are brilliant. If you’re at the bottom of the list (sorry Louisiana #50, Mississippi #49, and New Mexico #48), it’s flawed nonsense.
This particular rating system considers eight factors including: health care, education, economy, opportunity, infrastructure, crime and corrections, fiscal stability and quality of life.
According to this rating system, the overall #1 state in the country is….Iowa! Which immediately made me think, ‘If that’s true, then why do so many Iowans move to Colorado and work so hard to keep other Iowans from moving here?’
And the state with the #1 quality of life is…North Dakota? The raters must have visited in May. A January visit would have pushed them a bit lower!
Colorado landed as #10 on the list with the eight factors ranked thusly:
- Health care #9
- Education #20
- Economy #1
- Opportunity #28
- Infrastructure #14
- Crime & corrections #29
- Fiscal stability #31
- Quality of life #10
If you go to the website, you should also check out the Data Explorer feature – which you can find here or at the top of the web page. The Colorado data can be found here. Among the nuggets there, you’ll see that Colorado has the lowest obesity rate in America, per capita income for blacks in Colorado is higher than the national income average for blacks, and our labor participation rate is in the top 10 in the country.