Utah Tops US State Rankings for Fourth Year; Texas Economy No. 1

Utah ranked as the best state to live in for the fourth consecutive year, US News & World Report said in its annual list. The ranking evaluates each state across eight categories: education, healthcare, the economy, infrastructure, opportunity, fiscal stability, the natural environment, and crime and corrections. A survey of 25,000 Americans determined the weight of each category.

Senior data editor Evan Comen told Business Insider that the categories are not evenly weighted. A state can excel in one area but lag in another, and that can pull down its overall rank. Texas finished outside the top 25 even though it ranked first in the economy.

“The way we've structured our index, it does reflect some of these trade-offs among categories,” Comen said. “Texas is No. 1 in the economy – a lot of that economy is tied to oil and gas manufacturing. But then, Texas is No. 46 in natural environment. And our natural environment category is composed of metrics related to air and water quality and pollution.”

Florida and North Carolina were the only Sun Belt states in the top 25. Comen said the decline of some Southern states does not mean they are performing worse. “A decline in rankings doesn't necessarily mean a state is performing poorly in any metric, but rather that they are being outpaced by other states,” he said. “Some states in the South might have experienced ranking decline, but it's more because they're being outperformed by other states, particularly the Midwest.”

Utah held its No. 1 spot from the prior year. It ranked 48th in the natural environment category but had one of the most balanced profiles across the other seven categories, including the second-best economy.

The population data used in the rankings came from the U.S. census.