The ranking, published as part of CNBC’s annual Top States for Business study, evaluated states on factors including health care, crime, worker protections, inclusiveness, reproductive rights, childcare, voting access and environmental quality.<\/p>\n
Texas ranked 49th overall in the quality-of-life category, ahead of only Tennessee. The state earned 78 out of a possible 290 points and received an overall grade of F.<\/p>\n
CNBC identified health care as one of Texas’ biggest weaknesses. According to the report, 16.7% of Texans lack health insurance \u2014 the highest uninsured rate in the nation, based on data from the United Health Foundation. Texas also ranks last nationally in primary care physicians per capita.<\/p>\n
The network also cited crime, worker protections, civil rights and reproductive rights as factors that lowered Texas’ score.<\/p>\n
Despite its poor overall ranking, Texas performed better in a few areas. CNBC said average childcare costs and air quality ranked among the state’s relative strengths compared with other measures included in the study.<\/p>\n
The quality-of-life results stand in stark contrast to Texas’ business ranking. In CNBC’s 2026 Top States for Business study, Texas placed fourth overall.<\/p>\n
Quality of life is one of 10 categories used to determine CNBC’s overall business rankings. The network said the category has become increasingly important as more employers return workers to the office and use location as a tool to recruit and retain talent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ranking, published as part of CNBC’s annual Top States for Business study, evaluated states on factors including…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-372360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}