Posted on 03/03/2026 4:48:45 PM PST by CedarDave
According to WalletHub’s 2026 “Best States to Live In” study, New Mexico ranks dead last in the nation — a sobering distinction that underscores years of troubling trends in education, health, and public safety.
The annual analysis compares all 50 states across 51 separate indicators, including affordability, economic performance, education and health outcomes, quality of life, and safety. While some states perform strongly in certain categories and poorly in others, New Mexico’s overall placement at No. 50 signals broad, structural weaknesses that continue to drag down the state’s standing nationwide.
WalletHub assigns New Mexico an overall score of 39.68, the lowest in the country. The state’s weakest areas are education and health, where it ranks 48th, and safety, where it ranks 49th — nearly at the very bottom. Those figures reflect longstanding concerns about crime rates, health access, educational attainment, and student performance metrics.
While New Mexico’s economy ranks 33rd — closer to the middle of the pack — and its quality of life sits at 30th, those middling scores are not enough to offset deep problems in the areas that most directly impact daily life. Safety in particular weighs heavily in WalletHub’s methodology, and New Mexico’s near-bottom ranking in that category reflects persistent issues with violent crime and property crime that have plagued communities across the state.
Education and health metrics further compound the problem. Rankings in this category consider factors such as public school performance, high school graduation rates, access to medical care, and overall population health. New Mexico’s placement at 48th suggests that residents face significant disadvantages compared with most of the country when it comes to both schooling outcomes and healthcare access.
Even affordability — often cited as a relative advantage in lower-income states — does not provide New Mexico with a competitive edge. The state ranks 25th in affordability, squarely in the middle nationally. That means New Mexico does not enjoy the strong cost-of-living advantage seen in some other low-ranked states such as Alabama or Arkansas, both of which rank near the top for affordability despite struggling elsewhere.
Other states occupying the bottom tier include Louisiana (49th), Arkansas (48th), and Mississippi (47th). But New Mexico’s combination of low safety rankings and weak education and health outcomes ultimately pushes it to the very bottom of the list.
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LAST!
NM list PING!
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A good hint was when I learned that their state recipe is “Hatch chili stuffed roasted dog with lard sauce”.
NM would move up quickly if Trump and Hegseth executed a decapitation strike on Santa Fe and the governor’s mansion.
New Mexico has a lot more oil and gas they could develop and generate good paying jobs and tax revenue but.....the politicians would rather idiotically worship Gaia instead.
Those rankings are a complete joke.
Massachusetts would be one of my very last choices of states to live in. Awful people, Awful place.
New Jersey #3? LOLOLOL!!!! They’ve been losing population for years for a reason.
Minnesota #5? I lived there for 2 years. Winters are unbearable and this was back in 05 and 06 when it wasn’t completely insane and the Somali trash was mostly confined to North Minneapolis and thus easy to avoid.
They’d have to eradicate Albuquerque too.
This list is all over the place.
Because of urban utopias, this sort of sorting needs to go county by county.
Gotta be peaceful in their own version of the outback. no major airport or sports teams so I’d need a satellite dish need a good internet connection.
There’s something really wrong with the metrics if California isn’t in the bottom 10.
I’m not surprised
I lived in Silver City for a few years. It wasn’t bad there but I won’t go anywhere near ABQ. I wasn’t sorry to move back to Arizona when the time came.
Amen...COMPLETE joke!
Of all the things to complain about in New Mexico, the food isn’t it. It’s truly fantastic. The food and outdoors there are unparalleled.
Any sane person would ten times live in New Mexica over Massachusetts or New Jersey.
New Jersey is really very nice if you are an investment banker with a huge income living in one of the fancy towns.
Of course, Connecticut is even better. Greenwich, New Canaan, Darien, Westport. The best of everything for rich people.
Wisconsin is #4 in the rankings - usually in the Top 10 of any polls I’ve seen.
That said, make sure you buy a home in the right COUNTY. Dane County (’The Berkley of the Midwest’) will run you $12K each year in property taxes alone! And that’s not even in a NICE neighborhood!
I lived in Dane County WAY too long, though I had a farm off the beaten path with few to no services (water, cops, fire, trash) and my taxes for 1.2 acres was still $3,000!
I moved ONE COUNTY OVER and our taxes on 160 acres are the same. Granted, STILL no services of note, but we’re fine.
So, Dave - you are MORE than welcome in Wisconsin - just land somewhere affordable. And bring your snowshoes and your parka, maybe some hand warmers, DEFINITELY a hat and mittens and winter boots. Also, you’ll need to learn to like to drink Brandy and/or a Bloody Mary with a Beer chaser, LOL! ;)
You like CHEESE, Right? And Da Packers? Ya Hey! :)
When you continuously vote for liberals hoping to get free crap, this is what happens.
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