Best Places - US States

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Find out more about your Best Places in my book
Discovering Home: Your Best Place to Live..


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Discovering Home: Your Best Place to Live
 Where is the place that feels like home to you? Why does it feel that way?

Explore the various qualities that make a place what it is. Learn about many best places to live.

Discover how to start your own journey home. Take a trip to Paradise.



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Other Formats		 Rate States yourself.

All US States are included. I would have included Territories, but they are not evaluated in the Rankings. Washington DC sometimes is, but it includes parts of other States.
I used the latest rankings available in 2025. They might be a few years old.

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Best Places &n-; US States

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Notes: Many of the Rankings are from World Population Review. They usually provide data from elsewhere: Internations, Global Peace Index, Global Health Index, Environmental Performance Index. I also used information from Happy Planet Index and Fragile States Index.
Rankings are for Stability (includes Quality of Life), Cost of Living, Happiness, Healthy (includes Environmental Health), Democracy, Population Density, Internet Speed, etc. You can change the levels of importance as you see fit.
Double check your results. These results are vast generalizations and may not apply to an entire State.

To refresh the list of Top States, click Submit. (Enter does not work.) To reset the values to their defaults, click Reset.
Specify the Importance of each Ranking: Values can be 0 through 10. 1 is most important. 0 is ignored. Cost Least or Cost Average must be 0. Happiness or Happiness+Welcoming must be 0. Density Least or Density Average must be 0.

Importance
Level 1 &n-; Highest Importance: No matter your other criteria, if a State isn&';t stable, you&';ll probably have second thoughts about going there.
Level 2 &n-; Medium Importance: These are probably your second most important criteria.
or or
Level 3 &n-; Lowest Importance: While these criteria are probably important, when you think about things, they might take a back seat to the other criteria.
or
Note: If you want to do business while you&';re there, you&';ll want a minimum Internet Speed of around 100.
Level 4 &n-; Other Importance: In my Book, I state that you can tell a lot about the Best Place for You, but looking at where you prefer to be out in Nature. In my Book, I look at that first. On this webpage, I have saved those for last. I think you should first have a list based on other things, like Stability. Then, you can further research States to fit the criteria at this level. Level 4 does not change relative ranking. Despending on what you select, it might eliminate some places.
Average Annual Temperature: For most States this is fairly meaningless. There can be huge differences between morning and evening, months of the year, and regions. Still, it might be helpful.
     
Coastline: If you need to be near the Ocean, Coastline will help you know that. However, if it&';s not open to the public or otherwise innacessible, that doesn&';t help.  
Forest: Forests also may not be accessible. Forest/Total Land at least    
Air Quality: Air quality might differ in different parts of a State. Desert Areas tend to have a lot of dust / sand in the air and rank lower. Hawaii ranks high, in spite of the lava its volcano spews into the air. Utah has moderate air quality due to its mountains not allowing air pollution to escape from the valleys. The rest of the States have good air quality.

Top US States

Levels 2 & 3 each eliminate about 1/4 of the lowest ranking places.
Final Ranking does not include eliminated states.

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