(Jon Margolis writes political columns for VTDigger.)
[W]e’re No. 10.
At least according to U.S. News and World Report, which just released the results of an extensive, data-laden study of which states are “best.”
Vermont is 10th best. Not as good as Massachusetts (No. 1) or even Colorado (No. 9). But a little better than Virginia (No. 11) and much better than 50th-place Louisiana.
It’s the safest state of all, being tops in the “crime and corrections” category, and specifically in its “public safety” subcategory. It ranks sixth best in health care, 10th in “opportunity” (the extent to which “states are granting citizens tools to succeed”), 15th in education and 21st (less impressive but still in the top half) when it comes to government (“the quality of state administrative functions”).
Not a bad place to live, even though it has only 28th best infrastructure (energy, transportation and internet), and its economy is 33rd best, which could also be called 17th worst.
But as U.S. News Assistant Managing Editor Mark Silva pointed out, the opportunity category, where Vermont got a higher score, “is another way of considering the economy.”
Vermont would have a lower overall score if the study gave as much weight to its economy ranking as to the grades in health care and education. But based on “a national survey of what matters most to citizens around the country,” U.S. News said, the health care and education scores counted for 18 and 16 percent of the total score, respectively, while the economy comprised 13 percent of the total.
On the other hand, Vermont’s score probably would have been higher had the study dealt with the natural world. But there was nothing in it about clean air and water or the protection of forests and wildlife.
Silva said one “could draw a line from clean air and outdoor living” to some findings in the health care category, such as a state’s obesity rate. He said U.S. News and its partner, the prestigious McKinsey & Co. consulting firm, “came up with a broad range of categories that could be used to objectively compare the states,” without really explaining why environmental protection was not one of them.
Whatever its flaws, the study’s conclusions are based on a prodigious amount of information and statistics, with “thousands of data points used to determine state rankings across seven categories” and “several benchmarks” for each category, according to U.S. News.
The study explored “68 metrics in all,” produced 169,762 charts, and considered statistics as general and commonly known as median incomes, unemployment and poverty rates and student test scores, and as specific and arcane as the percentage of kids who don’t go to the dentist enough and how many nursing homes get cited for patients with bedsores.
The findings offer some support for Vermont advocates across the ideological spectrum. Liberals can point with pride to the state’s high scores in health care and education, while the state’s dismal ranking in “affordability” (45th) is likely to provoke an “I told you so” from pro-business conservatives, starting with Gov. Phil Scott, who made affordability a theme of his campaign last year.
But the results will likely confound those conservatives who regularly assail Vermont’s “business environment.”
It’s the 15th best in the country, the study found, largely because it is near the top (sixth) in “patent creation.”
Vermont is weak in “entrepreneurship,” measured by “the rate at which new businesses were formed between 2013 and 2015.”
Vermont does have a relatively low rate of business startups. But according to studies by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, new businesses in Vermont are more likely to succeed than in most other states.
At any rate, the study does not provide much evidence that one set of policies is more likely than another to guarantee prosperity. Vermont’s scores seem to stem less from what the state government does than from where it is.
Vermont’s neighbors scored well, too. New Hampshire was the second “best state,” mostly because it borders Massachusetts. New Hampshire’s prosperity, U.S. News noted, depends on how close it is to Boston.
Like most of the top-ranked states, Vermont is in the northern half of the country. Nine of the top 25 are in the Northeast. That includes all six New England states, with Vermont finishing ahead of Connecticut (12th), Maine (18th) and Rhode Island (21st).
Conversely, except for Alaska, which finished 43rd (50th in economy), all the states in the bottom 10 were in the southern half of the country, seven of them in the Southeast. The highest-ranking Southeastern state, North Carolina, was No. 25.
Vermont got its high score in education even though it was rated only 34th best in higher education. But it had the fifth best score in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade schooling.
No mystery here. Vermont skimps on spending for the University of Vermont and the state college system but spends more per pupil on elementary and secondary education than all but one or two other states.
Good schools cost money. So do safe streets, healthy people, sturdy bridges and a reliable electrical grid. Vermont may be one of the least affordable states, but top-scoring Massachusetts was even less affordable.
Only Iowa was in the top 10 (sixth) in the overall score and also one of the 10 most affordable. Aside from Alaska and Hawaii, all 10 of the least affordable states were rated in the top half of the “best states,” and three of them were in the top 10 overall.
All of which offers a valuable guidepost to some people, and re-teaches an old lesson to everyone. People looking to relocate can decide whether they really want a low cost of living, in which case they can head to Ohio, Iowa, Kentucky or Kansas, or whether better schools, health care and opportunity for advancement are worth higher prices and taxes.
The old lesson is: You get what you pay for.