Bankrate.com put this together using the crime rate from the 2010 FBI report, Crime in the United States,which reveals the estimated number of property and violent crimes per 100,000 people. The percentage of people ages 65 and older who are below the federal poverty line comes from the 2010 American Community Survey conducted by the Census Bureau. Average life expectancy figures are from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
#`1 Louisisana
Crime rate 4,196.5 per 100k
Percentage of retirees living below poverty line 11.5%
Life expectancy 75.4 yrs
#2 Georgia
Crime rate 4,043.8 per 100k
Percentage of retirees living below poverty line 10.7%
Life expectancy 77.1 yrs
#3 New Mexico
Crime rate 4,024.3 per 100k
Percentage of retirees living below poverty line 12%
Life expectancy 78.2 yrs
#4 Texas
Crime rate 4,233.3 per 100k
Percentage of retirees living below poverty line 10.7%
Life expectancy 78.3 yrs
#5 Arkansas
Crime rate 4,064.2 per 100k
Percentage of retirees living below poverty line 10.2%
Life expectancy 76.1 yrs
#6 Tennessee
Crime rate 4,271.2 per 100k
Percentage of retirees living below poverty line 9.7%
Life expectancy 76.2 yrs
#7 South Carolina
Crime rate 4498.1 per 100k
Percentage of retirees living below poverty line 9.8%
Life expectancy 76.6 yrs
#8 Mississippi
Crime rate 3,254.7 per 100k
Percentage of retirees living below poverty line 11.9%
Life expectancy 74.8 yrs
#9 Alabama
Crime rate 3,894.6 per 100k
Percentage of retirees living below poverty line 10.7%
Life expectancy 75.2 yrs
#10 Kentucky
Crime rate 2,793.0 per 100k
Percentage of retirees living below poverty line 11.2%
Life expectancy 76.2 yrs
Before my rant begins relating to Texas, one must wonder why Illinois and California are not on this list? Chicago is becoming the murder capital of the world, and California has so many issues(including citizen safety) one cannot list them all.
ReplyDelete>#4 Texas Crime rate 4,233.3 per 100k
Percentage of retirees living below poverty line 10.7% Life expectancy 78.3 yrs
Texas is becoming 'Californiaized,' with high population inflows from other states and the southern border. Progressives from the west and east coasts have been fleeing high-tax, over regulated, over-indebted states with bankrupt cities, bringing the same 'bad habits' to the Lone Star State. Many of them are winding up on City Councils. Just look at Austin, Texas in terms of bloated meddling local govt., out of control schools, profligate spending, and that tells the story(they even banned plastic & paper bags beginning in 2013).
Texas was a large, free market state, and now it ranks no. 4 on a Worst Place to Retire list, what a come down!
In Oregon, "Californiaized" is pronounced "Californicated".
DeleteIs it just me or is it when a state starts to do well financially all of a sudden a bunch of "progressive"/Lefties move in from dying states and begin the process of consuming said wealth at a faster rate via policy?(this isn't a defense of "righties" either)
DeleteI lived in S. California between 85' and 89' and it was very affluent...I went back last month for the first time in 20+ years and could see it becoming a shit hole.
I grew up in Detroit when it had the same degree of affluence...enough said right there...
The parasites are naturally following the affluence and creating misery in their wake. Sure, the process looks to be about 20 years or so...but it's interesting.
The South has more than average poverty levels, that does not mean that if I move there I will be plunged into poverty. A NJ resident, living off a fixed income of savings and benefits, might be much better off in a lower cost higher poverty level state.
ReplyDeleteCrime varies greatly by neighborhood. Atlanta might have higher than average crime, but North East Atlanta might be safer than Manhattan.
The lesson to be learned from this: Win Civil War II.
ReplyDeleteWhen you lump a whole state together it is very misleading. There are safe and less safe areas in every city, much less state.
ReplyDeleteWow. This methodology is complete crap. First, because the concept of a single threshold of poverty applying across the entire nation is just asinine. The census bureau details how they come up with this number here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/methods/measure.html
However, absent from the calculation is anything resembling a metropolitan-area or regional cost-of-living adjustment.
Also, do they even pretend to have justification for the built-in assumption that income, crime and life expectancy were the three major determinants of retirement quality? Even if these factors were the only big determinants, if people were to actually use this data to inform their retirement choices, they would be committing the ecolocigal fallacy.
RW, do you ever just post stuff like this to illustrate the silliness of conclusions drawn from poorly selected aggregate metrics?
We may be listed as more dangerous than Illinois, but folks in Louisiana have more fun.
ReplyDeleteI actually like this study; perhaps it will scare the Yankees away.
ReplyDeleteThe study says TN is the #6 worst place to retire; if one was thinking about moving to Memphis (my home town), then yeah. But the authors of the study apparently don't know about Maryville and Gatlinburg.
I think Gary North, who is very knowledgable in this area, would completely disagree with this list. He is a California transplant to the south.
ReplyDeleteYep, the South can be nice under the right set of circumstances. If you have a retirement nest egg or income the cost of living is very low comparitively to a lot of other states.
DeleteThe metrics used on senior citizen poverty isn't accounting for natives versus retirees from out of state.