A recent report ranks Hawaii as the best place to live in America. The CNBC report used factors like affordable housing, education quality, cost of living, healthcare quality, job opportunities, and environment to come up with the state rankings. Nice to see more than half of the states in the top 10 are ‘ski states’.
By the numbers, these are the states that offer the best quality of life. That’s because they offer everything people yearn for: low crime, great health care, inclusiveness, a clean environment and lots to do.
The ranking used hard data to evaluate all 50 states as places to live, including factors such as crime rates, local attractions, environmental quality and inclusiveness as measured by legal protections written into state laws.
This year’s rankings (and last year’s in brackets):
10. Massachusetts (#10)
9. Utah (#12)
7. Colorado (#9) / Montana (#7)
5. Washington (#5) / New Hampshire (#5)
4. North Dakota (#4)
3. Minnesota (#3)
2. Vermont (#1)
1. Hawaii (#2)
How could anything beat the Aloha State as a place to live? A jump in the crime rate allowed Vermont to overtake Hawaii in the category last year, but that proved temporary, and the state is back in its rightful state at the top of the Quality of Life list.
Hawaii is America’s healthiest state, with fewer preventable hospitalizations than anyplace else, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The air is the cleanest of any state. Hawaii offers an abundance of attractions. How could more than 3 million international visitors per year be wrong?
