Study: Florida Will Continue To Be One of America's Worst States to Live In

If you think Florida is a crappy place to live now, well, bad news, it's not going to get any better any time soon. Gallup recently culled together data across 13 metrics to decide which U.S. state will be the best to live in the future. Florida came in 45th...

By Kyle Munzenrieder

August 8, 2012

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If you think Florida is a crappy place to live now, well, bad news, it's not going to get any better any time soon. Gallup recently culled together data across 13 metrics to decide which U.S. state will be the best to live in the future. Florida came in 45th out of 50.

To come up with the rankings, Gallup averaged each state's rank in 13 different metrics after conducting surveys across the country. Some metrics were determined by the percentage of residents who agreed with certain statements like "they learned something new yesterday."

Here's how Florida did on each:

Economic Confidence Outlook: 34th
Job Creation Index: 38th
Employed Full Time for an Employer: 48th
Standard of Living: 42nd
Whether residents of individual areas of a state think their city is getting better or worse: 37th
"Learned something new yesterday": 34th
"Manager treats you like a partner, not a boss": 42nd
"Easy to find clean safe water": 42nd
"Easy to find a safe place to exercise": 29th
How many residents think their life will be better in 5 years: 12th
Low obesity rates: 17th
Nonsmokers: 27th
Visited a dentist in the last 12 months: 39th

"The findings are based on the results of over 530,000 interviews with U.S. adults conducted Jan. 2, 2011, through June 30, 2012, as a part of Gallup Daily tracking and the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index," Gallup says. "The selection of the 13 metrics was not based on any statistical model, but rather on their presumed relevance to future livability. Each metric contributed equally to the final ranking."

What's almost tragic about these results is that our highest ranking comes in the category of how many of us think our lives will be better in five years, while the rest of the results seem to indicate that it probably won't be for most of us. Maybe we just don't think things here could possibly get any worse. Well, sorry.

In case you're looking to move, Utah came in first overall, followed by Minnesota, but who wants to buy a coat? Just don't move to West Virginia, Mississippi, Kentucky, Nevada or Arkansas -- the five state below us -- if you don't want things to get worse.

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