KEY TAKEAWAYS: • Louisiana ranked No. 51 overall among all 50 states and Washington, D.C., in the bipartisan “State of the States” report. • The report analyzed data from 1990-2024 across 14 categories, including economy, education, health, environment and civic engagement. • Louisia na ranked first in civil liberties and freedom of the press but finished near the bottom in education, inequality, violence and labor force participation. • The Tulane-supported report was developed by a bipartisan board of researchers and policy experts from leading universities and think tanks.   Louisiana ranks last among all 50 states and the District of Columbia in a new bipartisan report that examines how states are performing across a wide range of economic, civic, health, education, environmental, and social measures. The report was timed with the United States’ 250th anniversary and is intended to help answer a broad question: “How are we really doing as a country?” Louisiana ranked No. 51 overall, with an average rank of 40.7 across all available measures. Minnesota ranked first with an average rank of 13.9, followed by New Hampshire, Iowa, Vermont and Massachusetts. The “State of the States” report, released by the State of the Nation Project and funded by Tulane University‘s The Murphy Institute, analyzed more than three decades of data to provide a long-term progress report for each state. The Murphy Institute educates Tulane students and the public on major economic, moral, and political challenges, while supporting research in public policy, public affairs, and civic engagement. “At a time of such polarization, misinformation and pessimism, it’s important to get a clear sense of how we’re really doing on what matters most. It turns out that states — red and blue — mostly share the same struggles,” said Douglas Harris, director of the State of the Nation Project and an economics professor in the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane. “This is the first report of its kind to examine not only economic outcomes but social, civic and personal outcomes by state.” Louisiana performed better on a small number of topics, ranking No. 1 in civil liberties and freedom of the press; No. 12 in youth depression; No. 18 in satisfaction with current life; No. 23 in trust; No. 25 in suicide rate; and No. 29 in mental health. But the state ranked near the bottom in several major categories, including inequality, environment and education, where it ranked No. 49; violence, where it ranked No. 50; and work and labor force, where it ranked No. 51. The Louisiana state profile also found that Louisiana outperformed its Southern neighbors in only one of the 14 topics measured and is improving over time on nine of the 30 measures for which trend data were available. The project builds on the original State of the Nation report released in 2025, which examined how the United States compares with other countries on a similar set of measures. This year’s report shifted the focus inward, comparing states against one another and tracking long-term state-level trends. Researchers began with the 37 measures from the original report and identified valid and reliable state-level data for 31 of them. Those measures span 14 topics: children and families, citizenship and democracy, civil liberties, economy, education, environment, inequality, life satisfaction, mental health, physical health, social capital, trust, violence, and work and labor force. The data covers the period from 1990 to 2024, allowing researchers to evaluate long-term trends rather than only recent year-to-year changes. For each measure, the report examined three questions: where each state ranks now, whether the state is improving or worsening over time and whether the state is improving or worsening relative to other states. In all, the project produced more than 4,000 indicators across all states and measures. The report was produced by a bipartisan board that includes researchers and policy experts from universities and think tanks across the political spectrum, as well as advisors to the past five U.S. presidents, Democrats and Republicans. Board members include scholars and policy experts from Tulane University, the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, Hillsdale College, and other institutions. ...read more read less