Most people don’t know that roughly one in nine individuals between the ages of 16 and 24 are neither working nor attending school. Others suffer from poor health conditions that hinder their ability to develop physically or socially.
But some states are worse off than others, so what factors into what makes a state a less conducive environment for youth? We take a look in this week’s Map Monday.
Personal financial website WalletHub recently evaluated the 50 states and Washington D.C. across 15 key indicators of youth risk to determine the places where young Americans are not faring as well as others in the same age group. Among the considerations: disconnected youth, youth with no high school diploma, labor force participation, poverty rate, teen pregnancy, and homelessness.
See the interactive map below.
| Overall Rank (1=Most at Risk) |
State | Total Score | ‘Education & Employment’ Rank | ‘Health’ Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Louisiana | 65.26 | 1 | 33 |
| 2 | District of Columbia | 61.83 | 3 | 23 |
| 3 | Mississippi | 61.37 | 2 | 38 |
| 4 | Arkansas | 60.76 | 4 | 25 |
| 5 | Nevada | 59.56 | 5 | 26 |
| 6 | West Virginia | 59.38 | 7 | 18 |
| 7 | Oregon | 58.64 | 22 | 2 |
| 8 | Wyoming | 57.28 | 13 | 7 |
| 9 | Oklahoma | 57.02 | 15 | 6 |
| 10 | New Mexico | 55.41 | 6 | 43 |
Contrarily, the 10 states with the least at-risk youth are as follows:
| 42 | Rhode Island | 38.65 | 39 | 32 |
| 43 | Connecticut | 37.06 | 48 | 13 |
| 44 | Virginia | 35.72 | 43 | 34 |
| 45 | Maryland | 35.60 | 47 | 28 |
| 46 | Hawaii | 35.39 | 31 | 49 |
| 47 | New Hampshire | 34.82 | 51 | 3 |
| 48 | Utah | 31.97 | 41 | 47 |
| 49 | Minnesota | 31.69 | 49 | 35 |
| 50 | Massachusetts | 31.19 | 50 | 14 |
| 51 | New Jersey | 29.08 | 46 | 48 |
So where does the Peach State fall?
Georgia ranked No. 31 with an ‘Education & Employment Rank’ of No. 9, but we ranked worst – No. 50 – in the ‘Health Rank.’

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