In an article at US News ranking the 50 states in terms of health care, education, economy, opportunity, infrastructure, crime and corrections, fiscal stability, and quality of life, Illinois ranks 47th in terms of quality of life and 35th overall. Illinois ranks dead last in terms of fiscal stability which sounds about right.
Iowa placed #1 which does not surprise me. Louisiana ranked #50 which is equally unsurprising.
California ranks last in terms of quality of life which, honestly, strikes me as peculiar.
However, I find Illinois’s ranking as 35th overall is a gross injustice—to the other states. Its ranking in opportunity (24th) and crime and corrections are obviously overrated and its ranking of 13th in infrastructure is a free flight of fancy as anyone who’s ever driven on an Illinois road will testify.
In short, we wuz robbed. We should have ranked last.
North Dakota has the best quality of life? Ever been there in the winter? Which is really long? Suspicious about the metrics here.
Steve
We’ve been looking at a lot of these kinds of lists and rankings since we’re trying to figure out where we’ll settle so the kids can have a normal high school.
This list is very weird.
Peculiar? Outright bizarre. It looks like quality of life is based upon two factors:
Air & water quality, which I can see being a problem for California due to geography (#44), but I don’t see why Illinois is ranked last. Hate to pull my “self-reporting” card, but if its not reported it ain’t a problem.
Social environment sounds like Elazar’s State Political Cultures (moralistic, individualistic, traditional), and a lot of Northern states are moralistic and did well. In 1966 Elazar coded California as moralistic, that might still be true of Northern California, but I think today it would be typed individualistic, like Illinois, and not rank high.
The quality of life measures probably tend to favor rural areas.
@andy, do you expect to find a home before or after we learn the truth about Russian interference in the 2016 elections?
California gets low ranks in a wide variety of social issues, so its low overall ranking is understandable. Even San Francisco, for all its super rich residents, is a literal shithole. If you want the ugly details, go read Victor Hansen.
There are many issues with their rankings. Most of the states rated highest in “Quality of Life” are also among the whitest. The exceptions are Mississippi (#6) and Arkansas (#7), two of the blackest states.
I think they’re measuring something other than “Quality of Life”.
PD,
Well, not exactly, but we are keeping places with underground shelters on a shortlist 😉
That “Quality of Life” metric apparently depends heavily on the percentage of voters in the population. California has a lot of Hispanics who don’t vote all that much.