When it comes to settling down and starting a family, people take all kinds of factors into consideration -- and now, a new study by personal injury experts the Whitley Law Firm has surveyed each of the United States across a host of different metrics to uncover the safest and most dangerous states to start a family overall.
The study's authors looked at 26 different health and safety factors, ranging from homicide and violent crime rates to firearm ownership, theft, drug related crimes, and medical mortality data, as well as environmental factors like air cleanliness and water quality. That data was aggregated to produce an overall index ranking, and standardized on a scale from 0-10, worst to best, for each one. All 26 metrics were then categorized and weighted, based on their relative importance, and a final score out of 100 was determined for each state.
With all the numbers and data crunched, the study found that America's most dangerous state overall was Louisiana, which earned an overall risk score of 68.86 out of 100. With the worst homicide rates and highest level of student firearm ownership in the country -- as well as high rankings for drownings, suffocations, and deaths by choking -- Louisiana's score makes it a staggering 38 times worse than America's safest state.
Coming in a close second behind Louisiana was New Mexico, which scored 65.15 out of 100 overall. Its score was largely thanks to it having the highest rates of criminal assault and cyclist deaths in the country (and the second-highest homicide rate -- after Louisiana -- which, at 1.22 per 100,000 people each month, is over two-times the national average).
Arkansas came in third with an overall risk score of 63.46, putting it a little more than a point and a half behind New Mexico. It ranked poorly for both perinatal care (with the second-worst infant mortality rate in the country) and sexual assault, as well as a host of environmental factors: Arkansas's air quality is the third worst on average in the entire United States.
The remainder of the top 5 saw Mississippi (63.41) come in fourth place overall, followed by South Carolina (59.51) in fifth. Oklahoma (55.07), Tennessee (54.62), Alabama (51.23), Wyoming (50.41) and Missouri (49.26) rounded out the remainder of the top 10.
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At the opposite end of the scale, the Whitley survey uncovered America's safest states -- those that ranked lowest for each metric overall -- and found that Massachusetts came out on top with a relative risk score of just 19.28 out of 100. It had the lowest child and maternal mortality rates overall, and the second lowest motor vehicle-related deaths in the country, with just four recorded road fatalities for every 100,000 people.
Coming in a close second on the list, New Jersey scored a respectable 20 out of 100, putting it less than a single data point away from the top spot. Its drug and sexual assault rates were found to be the lowest in the country.
The northeast corner of the United States fared well overall: Rhode Island (23.45) ranked third, followed by Vermont (24.42); Connecticut (26.05), New Hampshire (26.19), New York (26.59), and Maine (28.87) also made it into the Top 10 in sixth, seventh, eighth, and 10th place, respectively.
In fact, the only states at the top of the list not located in America's northeast were Hawaii in fifth (which has the lowest homicide rate overall, and a relative risk score of just 24.93), and Minnesota in ninth (with a score of 26.61).