Minnesota has been considered the best state for women to live for the last three years and that title isn’t changing hands. On Monday, the North Star State was once against named the best state for women to live, according to a Wallethub study.
States and Washington, D.C., were ranked from one to 51 (51 being the worst score), on a 100-point scale based on 19 different criteria such as women’s safety, along with social and economic health. The study compared everything from earnings of female employees to women’s preventative health care options to female homicide rates and found that Minnesota ranked the highest among all 50 states and the District of Columbia, scoring a total of 78.37 points.
Along with having one of the lowest high school dropout rates, Minnesota also had one of the lowest unemployment rates for women and the lowest uninsured female population. Vermont trailed closely behind Minnesota, ranking the second best place for women to live in 2017 with a total of 76.08 points, while Minnesota’s neighbor, North Dakota, came in third with 74.49 points.
Mississippi fared the worst, scoring only 34.01 points. The state had the highest unemployment rate for women and the highest number of women in poverty. Mississippi also had the lowest life expectancy rate for women.
Mississippi’s neighbors, Louisiana and Alabama, were just ahead of Mississippi as the second- and third-worst states for women, respectively.
Robyn Muncy, the Interim Chair of Women’s Studies and a history professor at University of Maryland who was involved in the study, suggested states consider policies that could better benefit women, like raising the minimum wage, demanding equal pay across unions in the public and private sectors and doing more to ensure women have access to quality health care by expanding Medicaid and promoting “as robust of a health insurance marketplace as possible.”
“The financial issues that women face today range from low pay – women working full time make about 79 cents for every dollar that men make – to inadequate provision for retirement. Because women make less money than men and are often out of the labor market to care for children or other family members at some point in their adult lives, they often cannot save adequately for retirement or pay for health insurance or advanced education,” Muncy said in a statement.
“Because they are a group less laid than men, the causes and institutions that they believe in cannot hope for the same financial support as those in which men especially believe. These financial inequities sustain women’s subordination to men in American life.”
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