Texas among most dangerous U.S. states, study finds

The Texas State Capitol in daylight. Credit: Wikimedia Commons / LoneStarMike

While Texas leaders love to brag that it’s a law-and-order state, it’s certainly far from a safe place to live, according to a new study by personal finance blog WalletHub.

Indeed, Texas ranked as the third-most dangerous U.S. state in WalletHub’s report, which examines not just crime stats but factors such as workplace safety, emergency preparedness and healthcare access.

WalletHub ranked states using 52 metrics, ranging from assaults per capita and number of law-enforcement officials to road fatalities and climate-related natural disasters. Researchers then grouped that data into five categories to compile its rankings.

Those groups include personal and residential safety, financial safety, road safety, workplace safety and emergency preparedness.

Despite state leaders’ love for law-and-order rhetoric, Texas ranked in the bottom half for all five categories and landed in second-to-last place in emergency preparedness.

Texas’ distinction of having the nation’s highest rate of people without health insurance also dragged down its overall ranking. To point, there are seven times more uninsured people in the Lone Star State than in Massachusetts, the state with the highest rate of healthcare coverage, according to WalletHub.

Vermont ranked as the nation’s safest state, followed by Massachusetts and New Hampshire in respective order.

On the other end of the spectrum, only Mississippi and Louisiana fared worse in WalletHub’s rankings.

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Texas among most dangerous U.S. states, study finds

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