{"id":20465,"date":"2023-05-15T00:00:27","date_gmt":"2023-05-15T00:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/?p=20465"},"modified":"2024-10-24T19:24:41","modified_gmt":"2024-10-24T19:24:41","slug":"measuring-quality-of-life-where-does-texas-rank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/2023\/05\/15\/measuring-quality-of-life-where-does-texas-rank\/","title":{"rendered":"Measuring “Quality of Life”: Where Does Texas Rank?"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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In the past two blog posts, we have looked at data that have painted the state of Texas in a very good light in terms of overall rankings for top states for business<\/a> and a quality workforce<\/a>. One of the areas in which Texas has not fared well has been in the “Quality of Life” component of CNBC’s\u00a0America’s Top States for Business<\/a> study. After hovering in the 30s for most of the 14 years of this study, <\/span>Texas has been ranked next-to-last (49th out of 50 states) in the last two years of the study for “Life, Health & Inclusion (LHI),” which is the renamed title for “Quality of Life” in the CNBC study<\/i><\/b><\/span>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

In general, the LHI construct is comprised of metrics covering areas such as crime rates, childcare, inclusiveness in state laws and voting rights, and health care quality (CNBC methodology<\/a>). In the article, “These 10 states are America’s worst places to live in 2022<\/a>“, Texas was awarded a grade of “F” with 72 points out of a possible 325 points for the LHI domain. Ranking Texas as the second-to-worst place to live, the article <\/span>authors identified “childcare, health resources, inclusiveness, and voting rights” as weaknesses<\/b><\/span>, mentioning that Texas had “no metrics in the top 50%” in the LHI domain.<\/span><\/p>

In the first visualization below labeled “LHI Rankings (Best\/Worst States),” we can see the top and bottom 10 states in the rankings. Vermont is the highest-ranked state with 300 out of 325 points, and Arizona is the lowest-ranked state with 67 points, just below Texas with 72 points. When seeing the rankings, one of the first thoughts that came to mind was the political “leaningness” of each state. In order to categorize states, we looked at states’ voting patterns in presidential elections since 1980. States that voted for the Democratic candidate at least 6 of the 11 election cycles are colored in blue with a circle, while states that voted for the Republican candidate more than 50% of the election cycles are colored red with a diamond shape. As you can see, 80% of the top 10 states in the Life, Health & Inclusion rankings can be classified as Democrat-leaning states, while 80% of the bottom 10 states in the LHI rankings can be seen as Republican-leaning based on presidential election data.<\/b><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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