22-07-2025
Map Shows States With Best—and Worst—Quality of Life
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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New data has revealed the states with the highest, and lowest, quality of life, with states in the Midwest and Northwest ranking highest and states in the South ranking lowest.
CNBC's "America's Top States For Business" study showed that Vermont is the state with the best quality of life, while Tennessee sits at the bottom of the ranking.
Why It Matters
The rankings aim to identify key factors that are important to businesses and companies when making decisions about site selection, as well as what makes states more appealing to workers.
In light of major political changes under the Trump administration, such as the recently passed reconciliation package, the One Big Beautiful Bill, a newly added metric to gauge the data was states' risks from a trade war and a shrinking federal budget, highlighting how economic stability could be a new, but significant, concern for states in coming years.
What To Know
CNBC's study, which first started 19 years ago, scored all 50 states on 135 metrics across 10 broad categories to determine which state was the best in the country for business development.
"Quality of life is measured using dimensions that researchers think matter to a population's life experience for a particular purpose," Leah McClimans, philosophy professor and co-director of the Ann Johnson Institute for Science, Technology and Society at the University of South Carolina, told Newsweek.
In the case of the CNBC study, the focus is on business, meaning researchers "want to measure quality of life in the context of attracting workforce talent," she said.
"They understood this through dimensions of crime, health care, environmental quality, affordability, availability of childcare, protections against discrimination and abortion policies."
Also, as several of the criteria in the quality-of-life ranking included state laws relating to civil rights protections, employee rights against discrimination and reproductive rights, "states with more restrictive laws, so-called red states, will not score as well on the quality-of-life metric," David Cella, medical social sciences professor and director of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine at Northwestern University, Illinois, told Newsweek.
In the study, the top 10 states for quality of life were: Vermont, Maine, New Jersey, Minnesota, Connecticut, Hawaii, North Dakota, Virginia, Nebraska and Massachusetts.
The 10 states at the bottom of the ranking were: Tennessee, Texas, Indiana, Louisiana, Utah, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri.
While she noted that Vermont, Maine and New Jersey were ranked highly because they do well on a number of the measured criteria, McClimans told Newsweek she was "a little surprised because child care and health care are relatively expensive in these states compared to, say, Texas and even Tennessee."
She added that this could be down to "how the study weighted these dimensions and where they got their data."
Vermont, Maine and New Jersey "clearly do better when it comes to abortion protections and protections against discrimination," McClimans said.
Cella said that he didn't find the list "surprising."
"Vermont and Maine are consistently among the states with the lowest crime rates and best environmental quality," he said, explaining that both factors are major components to what we consider good quality of life.
Although, New Jersey's high ranking is down to different factors, he said, most likely the state's "healthy supply of job opportunities in pharmaceuticals and life sciences, financial services and technology, attracting people to move there."
Additionally, "worker protections against discrimination and protections on reproductive rights will attract a young and diverse workforce," Cella added.
What People Are Saying
Leah McClimans, philosophy professor and co-director of the Ann Johnson Institute for Science, Technology and Society at the University of South Carolina, told Newsweek: "I think quality of life should be measured using dimensions that matter to people living in a particular place, not what researchers think matter to them. One key factor that I think affects quality of life is the time, money and bureaucracy it takes to do the things that matter—go for a walk, find child care, find a good school, get a job, attend a protest. It isn't just whether these things exist, but do they exist in a way that is easy and equitable to access them?
"The rankings can definitely change. They could change tomorrow if you change what dimensions you measure and how you weight them. Keeping the dimensions from this study fixed over time could also result in changes, but for that to happen policy changes would need to come into effect, for example, changes in abortion policy, changes in crime rates and more."
David Cella, medical social sciences professor and director of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine at Northwestern University, Illinois, told Newsweek: "Crime, health and health care, and environmental quality are at the top of my list. Crime rates are measured by county, state and country, in various ways, usually sorting violent and non-violent crime. Health and health care are measured by incidence of serious diseases, individual surveys and health care quality metrics. Environmental quality is measured in various ways, including tracking pollutants, air quality and toxic emissions."
What Happens Next
Quality-of-life rankings are likely to shift in the coming months and years, with tariffs, immigration and climate change potentially having a "big effect on the rankings," Cella said.
"How states respond, or don't respond, to tariffs as they evolve could create both opportunities and challenges," he said.
Cella said that immigration and deportation can have a "dramatic effect on the workforce and business opportunities in those states more affected by them," while climate change effects on air quality, disaster relief and the resulting state economy in those states affected by wildfires, hurricanes, flooding and more could "be substantial in the coming years."
