REGIONAL — As America nears its 250th birthday next month, a bipartisan group of scholars from across the political spectrum have produced a detailed assessment of the 50 U.S. states—and have given Minnesota its highest rating.
It’s part of the State of the States Project, funded by Louisiana-based Tulane University and the Murphy Institute, designed to assess the health of all 50 states across 31 measures and 14 topics, including the economy, education, mental health, life satisfaction, trust, violence, and more. It was the second of two reports issued by the researchers. The same team produced a State of the Nation report last year, which assessed how the U.S. as a whole is faring on those same measures and topics, and how it compares to other countries. The reports, produced by a panel evenly divided between liberal and conservative scholars, were produced and released as a kind of checkup on the nation’s status 250 years into the American experiment.
While some have likened it to a measure of quality of life, the State of the States report is more an assessment of the overall political, social, physical, and economic health of the 50 states and their inhabitants.
Minnesota is the top-ranked state overall, which means it ranked the highest, on average, across all 31 measures used in the report. New Hampshire was next in line, followed by Iowa, as the report noted that the Upper Midwest and New England fared the best overall. Minnesota’s neighboring states, including Wisconsin, Iowa, and North and South Dakota all ranked among the top ten states in the report. States in the southern United States fared poorly in the assessment. Indeed, Tulane’s home state of Louisiana, came in dead last in the assessment.
Minnesota’s strengths identified in the study include civic engagement and labor force health. It ranks second in voter participation, third in both employment-to-population ratio and labor force participation, and fourth in both social capital (volunteerism) and young adults employed or in school. The state also ranks fourth in poverty reduction and eighth in both low birthweight and life expectancy — all strong showings on foundational quality-of-life measures.
Minnesotans appear to be bucking the national trend of increasing social isolation and rank fourth-best on that measure. Minnesota ranked tenth best when it comes to satisfaction with current life, and 11th best on income inequality. Minnesota also fared well on measures of violence, ranking eighth-best on shootings and 16th best for its murder rate.
The state also rates highly for its academic achievement, ranked seventh-best overall in the report, although the state did experience the same decline in academic test scores seen in other states as a result of the COVID pandemic.
Yet, the report finds that Minnesota is not immune to some of the negative national trends currently plaguing the U.S. While it ranks relatively high for life satisfaction, those feelings of satisfaction appear to be on the decline as has been the case in virtually every U.S. state for some time. Minnesotans appear to be losing trust in the federal government and are experiencing more depression, particularly among young girls. That’s a trend that has been documented nationally and appears to coincide with the widespread adoption of social media among young people. Indeed, Minnesota received its lowest rating, at number 43, for youth depression, although the state’s result largely tracks national trends.
The report did include at least a couple head-scratchers. It rated Minnesota at number 32 on freedom of the press, a ranking that was based on the number of journalists reporting they were assaulted or arrested, or experienced damage to equipment while on the job. The trend line on an accompanying chart documents a huge spike that coincides with the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd.
Since then, the state has returned to levels of assaults or arrests of journalists slightly below the national average, although the data does not include the likely uptick in such incidents caused by federal agents seen this past winter during the Trump administration’s Metro Surge.
The report also rates Minnesota poorly on greenhouse gas emissions, although the report’s authors are not clear how they achieved their conclusions on that score. The state’s greenhouse gas emissions have held largely steady since 1990, despite significant growth in both the state’s population and its economy over the past 36 years.
Minnesota has one of the strictest renewable energy standards for electric utilities in the country, requiring 100 percent renewable or carbon-neutral generation of electricity by 2040. The state has made enormous strides on that front, with power sector emissions having fallen by over 50 percent since 2005. At the same time, the state continues to lag behind benchmarks necessary to meet its 2050 goal for carbon neutrality economy wide.

Warning signs across the states
The assessment did make note of several concerning trends that are affecting states across the country. The report notes that no states showed improvement on several measures, including life satisfaction, adult and youth depression, fatal overdoses, trust in the federal government, income inequality, long-term unemployment, or hourly earnings growth. The only two measures where all states improved were child mortality and total state GDP.
While the report found that states are generally converging on most measures, that was not the case on questions of personal and social well-being, such as depression, suicide, and life satisfaction, where states were pulling apart. Minnesota still ranked highly (typically in the top ten) on these measures, with youth depression being a notable exception.
Interestingly, the report found no meaningful connection between higher income per capita and rates of life satisfaction or depression, suggesting that what ails the country isn’t necessarily based on economic measures.
A quarter millennium since the founding of the nation, the country remains an economic superpower, but it appears that isn’t translating into better lives for Americans in general.