Sometimes it's hard for us to see the good in the state we live in. People have a tendency to find more of the bad things than the good things. The two states that make up the Quad Cities -- Iowa and Illinois -- were just put towards the top of a list of 2022's best states to live in. Hopefully this study and the facts we're about to show you shine a brighter light on the good things about the two states that make up our area.

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Recently, our friends at WalletHub revealed their list of 2022's Best States To Live In. Even though we're friends, we didn't sway them to put Iowa and Illinois towards the top of this list. This is entirely done by WalletHub using the facts.

In order to determine the best and worst states to live in, WalletHub compared the 50 states across five key dimensions:

  1. Affordability
  2. Economy
  3. Education & Health
  4. Quality of Life
  5. Safety

WalletHub evaluated those dimensions using 52 relevant metrics. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable living conditions.

Finally, WalletHub determined each state’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score. Those overall scores let WalletHub rank each state giving up 2022's Best States To Live In.

Source: WalletHub

WalletHub found that Iowa and Illinois are both pretty good states to live in. As a matter of fact, they are right next to each other on this list with Illinois being ranked one position higher than Iowa.

Illinois was named the 15th best state to live in in 2022. WalletHub gave Illinois an overall score of 55.47 and this is how Illinois ranked in those 5 key dimensions:

  1. Affordability - 36th
  2. Economy - 50th
  3. Education & Health - 23rd
  4. Quality of Life - 4th
  5. Safety - 7th

Right behind Illinois was Iowa which was named the 16th best state to live in in 2022. WalletHub gave Iowa an overall score of 55.37 and this is how Iowa ranked in those 5 key dimensions:

  1. Affordability - 20th
  2. Economy - 28th
  3. Education & Health - 18th
  4. Quality of Life - 17th
  5. Safety - 21st

WalletHub also found that Iowa was #1 in lowest housing cost.

2022's #1 state to live in according to WalletHub is Massachusetts. The #50, or worst state to live in this year is Mississippi.

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