With about one in nine young Americans today neither working nor in school, exposing them to greater risk of poverty and violence, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on 2019's States with the Most At-Risk Youth as well as accompanying videos.
To determine where young Americans are not faring as well as others in their age group, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 15 key indicators of youth risk. The data set ranges from share of disconnected youth to labor force participation rate among youth to youth poverty rate.
States with the Most At-Risk Youth:
1. Louisiana
2. District of Columbia
3. Mississippi
4. Arkansas
5. Nevada
6. West Virginia
7. Oregon
8. Wyoming
9. Oklahoma
10. New Mexico
States with the Least At-Risk Youth
42. Rhode Island
43. Connecticut
44. Virginia
45. Maryland
46. Hawaii
47. New Hampshire
48. Utah
49. Minnesota
50. Massachusetts
51. New Jersey
Key Stats
New Mexico, West Virginia and Louisiana have the highest share of disconnected youth, 19.00 percent, which is 3.2 times higher than in North Dakota, the lowest at 6.00 percent.
• Louisiana has the highest share of youth without a high school diploma, 17.80 percent, which is 2.4 times higher than in Hawaii, the lowest at 7.40 percent.
• Oklahoma has the highest share of overweight or obese youth, 61.50 percent, which is 1.9 times higher than in Massachusetts, the lowest at 32.10 percent.
•Vermont has the highest share of youth using drugs in the past month, 40.32 percent, which is 2.5 times higher than in North Dakota, the lowest at 16.18 percent.
• Nevada has the highest share of homeless youth, 0.56 percent, which is 18.7 times higher than in Mississippi, the lowest at 0.03 percent.
To view the full report and your state or the District’s rank, please visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-most-at-risk-youth/37280/
Please let me know if you have any questions or if you would like to schedule a phone, Skype or in-studio interview with one of our experts. Feel free to embed this YouTube video summarizing the study on your website. You can also use or edit these raw files as you see fit. Full data sets for specific states and the District are also available upon request.