Ranking The States: Where Does Texas Stand?

What is the best state in the country?

According to a new series of rankings released by U.S. News and World Report, that title belongs to Massachusetts.

The inaugural rankings were compiled by evaluating all 50 states across a range of criteria from education and healthcare to infrastructure and the economy. The rankings were developed using McKinsey and Company’s “Leading States Index,” which combines thousands of data points across 68 specific metrics.

After Massachusetts, the best states are New Hampshire, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Washington.

The 68 metrics in the “Leading States Index” were separated into 20 groups, which were further arranged into seven categories:

Health Care

Education

Infrastructure

Crime and Corrections

Opportunity

Economy

Government

All categories were weighted based on a national survey that asked people to prioritize seven categories in their state, such as education, crime, and others in the order of most important and least important. Health care and education received the highest weightings nationwide.

In the seven categories, Massachusetts is No. 1 in education, Hawaii is No. 1 in health care, Oregon is No. 1 in infrastructure, Vermont is No. 1 in crime and corrections, New Hampshire is No. 1 in opportunity, Colorado is No. 1 in economy and Indiana ranks No. 1 for government.

So where does Texas stand?

According to the rankings, the Lone Star State is the 38th best state in the country, which puts it in the bottom quarter of the list.

Here’s how Texas ranked across all seven categories:

Health Care: 30

Education: 41

Infrastructure: 49

Crime and Corrections: 31

Opportunity: 45

Economy: 6

Government: 11

U.S. News had this to say about Texas:

The second-largest state in both population and size, Texas is more diverse than most, with more than twice the national average of Hispanic residents, a margin expected to widen. Among foreign-born residents, 70 percent come from Latin America and another 21 percent from Asia.

Hispanics will drive most of the state’s population growth in coming decades, as baby boomers die off and younger, larger families move in. Five of the country’s 11 fastest-growing cities are in Texas, according to recent U.S. Census data, and experts expect the population to double to 54 million by 2050.

The most populous cities include food and nightlife destination Houston, followed by San Antonio, Dallas and Austin, billing itself as “The Live Music Capital of the World” and ranking in U.S. News’ top five Best Places to Live and Best Alternative Spring Break Destinations.

It's a mixed bag for Texas. Education at 41 is nothing to brag about, but Economy at 6 indicates robust job growth. However, number 45 in the Opportunity category is an indication of the state's issues with household income disparity, food insecurity, and overall poverty rate. In addition, Texas comes in at 48 in the Equality category, a product of poor gender equality and a large racial gap in income.

Click here for more information about how Texas fares across all categories.

NOTE: The data was pulled from various sources, with government data being favored over other sources due to its reliability. For each set, U.S. News used the most recent data available as of Dec. 22, 2016. Because datasets have different schedules for updates, data come from different years and months. This allowed U.S. News to pull many more data points. All data will be updated again for the 2018 relaunch of Best States. In some cases, data for certain states are missing because not all states provide data for all metrics. In other cases, especially in states with small populations, there weren’t enough people to have a statistically significant sample in a given year, which led to missing values. Metrics with missing data from the calculation of rankings for those states were omitted. Ties were rare in the dataset because scores were calculated to the maximum amount of decimal places without rounding. In some cases, where the score was from a letter grade, such as the digitization index, there were ties. Best States didn’t rank Washington, D.C., or U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico. Data for Washington, D.C. were included for national averages. You can see all the raw data behind the Best States ranking on the Data Explorer.