California and New York rank in the middle. Florida and Texas are a bit below average.
Louisiana is at the bottom, with New Mexico, West Virginia, Nevada, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arkansas and South Carolina not much better off.
In general, the states doing well tend to be in New England or the western part of the Midwest and are somewhat prosperous. The worst performers tend to be red states in the South, but the patterns aren’t clear-cut.
And let’s acknowledge that this is a single study relying on data that are sometimes subjective. This is not the last word in rankings. Still, I think it helps when Republican and Democratic experts agree on a snapshot of where we are. Three lessons seem paramount to me:
America does an excellent job generating wealth and a poor job translating that wealth into things we value. For example, the State of the Nation Project says, the United States performs better than 98 percent of countries worldwide in economic output, but better than only 57 percent of nations in child mortality, 33 percent in belief in democracy and 11 percent in measures of depression and anxiety. Domestically, rich states tend to outperform poor states, but the correlation is somewhat weak. What matters even more than economic growth is that benefits are shared, and richer states do not seem to produce more personal satisfaction.
Social spending, especially on education, improves citizen outcomes, but what matters in addition to the sums themselves is how the money is spent. Minnesota ranks 13th among states in the share of personal income going to state and local taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, but it seems to get a high return on its spending.
Southern red states do poorly, but some of the most progressive states also underperform, especially given how wealthy they are. Politicians in some liberal states seem better at reciting slogans (“Housing is a human right!”) than at actually building housing. Indeed, instead of spurring action, the slogans sometimes substitute for it. I’ve argued that the states doing the most to lift education outcomes are a trio of red states better known for their past failures in social policy: Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. These rankings are a reminder that what matters to residents is less the boldness of the vision than relentless empiricism and careful execution.
