READ.ME

Best States to Live

Project 2

Objective

The aim of this project was to find the best states to live in based on the Cost of Living, Opportunities, Workforce, Economy, Quality of Life, Education, Crime Rate, and Estimated Average Income. I chose these categories because they tend to be the main deciding factors for measuring how well states/governments are tending to their citizens.
I gathered data from multiple sources such as US News, Crime Data Explorer, U.S. Census, and CNBC for the purpose of being unbiased.

Technologies

• Python
• JavaScript
• Flask
• HTML
• CSS
• Bootstrap
• BeautifulSoup

About Data

• Cost of Living - housing, food, energy, overall basic items, and wages that go further when the cost of living is low. Education is based preschool, K-12 and different levels of higher education.
• Opportunity - measures poverty, housing affordability and equality for women, minorities, and people with disabilities.
• Workforce - the education level of the states workforce, the numbers of available employees, and net migration of college-educated workers.
• Economy - tracks unemployment rates, GDP growth, migration into the state, patents, new businesses and more.
• Quality of Life - livability including the quality of health care, the level of health-insurance coverage and overall health of the population, local attractions, parks, and recreation, and environmental quality.
• Education - based preschool, K-12 and different levels of higher education.
• Crime Rate - per 100,000 people, by year for property crime incidents submitted by law enforcement agencies in each state.
• Estimated Average Income - median household income and the Gini index of income inequality.

Write-up of Findings

• Which is the best state to live?

According to my data and choropleth map, the best states to live in is Mississippi. Mississppi is considered the best state to live solely based on the Cost of Living. However, the average income is just above $44,000 and it ranks higher in all other categories. `

• Which is the worst state to live?

Based off the Cost of Living, Hawaii was ranked the worst to live. However, in Quality of Life, Hawaii ranked at second and the average income is roughly $80,212.