“We are bombarded every day with headlines—mostly negative—so it is easy to get overwhelmed by the multitude of challenges we face,” according to the State of the Nation Project’s 2026 State of the States Report, which came out in early June (following up on a similar report issued last year), The project aim is to “cut through this noise and focus attention on the critical issues that matter most.”

The Project reaches its conclusions by bringing together thought leaders, both democrats and republicans. It then goes further by involving about 1,000 Americans “to get their views on the best indicators of our progress.”

The assessment includes 37 measures spread across 14 topics, including Children and Families, Citizenship and Democracy, Civil Liberties, Economy, Education, Environment, Inequality, Work and Labor Force, Life Satisfaction, Mental Health, Physical Health, Social Capital, Trust, and Violence. In addition to creating a separate report for every state, this document covers the major findings of this research. The first four listed are: 

• An overview of where the states fall. A simple measurement of “average rank” is developed based on “the most recent data for each state across all 31 measures.” In terms of average rankings, Minnesota appears to have fared the most positive in terms of a selection of average rankings and Louisiana the least positive. As the report explains, “The top-ranked regional divisions are New England and the western Midwest, respectively, while the three Southern regional divisions have the lowest average rankings.”

• Information on state trend lines. The project found that “for most measures that show a national decline, nearly all states and regions follow the same pattern. For example, no state is improving on the following 8 measures: life satisfaction, adult depression, youth depression, fatal overdoses, trust in the federal government, income inequality, long-term unemployment rate, and hourly earnings growth. At the other end of the spectrum, all states are improving on two measures: child mortality and state total income (state Gross Domestic Product).”

• Analysis on state similarities and differences. According to the report: “States are becoming more alike in most ways — but growing further apart on the measures that may be fueling our divisions. The prior findings showed that states are generally moving in the same direction, but some states might be improving or worsening much faster than others. Our analysis suggests that states are converging on 17 measures, while only 13 are diverging. This is noteworthy given rising national political polarization. States are becoming more similar on most dimensions, even as we seem to increasingly disagree about how to solve our problems.”

One notable exception to longer-term trends concerned income. “Prior research has shown that states converged toward one another on this measure steadily until around the 1980s, then this convergence slowed. We find that this process has now actually reversed so that state incomes are moving apart. . .  the national average is worsening, which means some states are worsening severely while others are worsening slowly. These aspects of divergence could help explain rising polarization.”

• Bleak news on measures of self-reported well-being. “Only a handful of states are improving on any measure of self-reported well-being,” according to this analysis, which explains that a prior report “showed that the nation is ranked low globally on measures of personal well-being (e.g., life satisfaction, anxiety, and depression) and social well-being (e.g., trust in people and institutions).” This new report “does nothing to allay concern about these metrics,” which, in most cases, have been “worsening over time.”

#StateGovernmentPerformance #StateOfTheNationsProject #2026StateOfTheStateReport #StatePerformanceRankings #StatePerformanceTrendLines #StatePerformanceMeasurement #StateandLocalGovernmentData #StateDecliningPerformanceLifeSatisfaction #StateDecliningPerformanceAdultDepression #StateDecliningPerformanceYouthDepression #StateDecliningPerformanceTrustInFederalGovernment #StateDecliningPerformanceIncomeInequality #StateDecliningPerformanceLongTermUnemploymentRate #StateDecliningPerformanceHourlyEarningsGrowth #StateImprovingPerformanceChildMortality #StateImprovingPerformanceStateGrossDomesticProduct #StateDecliningMeasuresOfWellBeing  #StateManagementMentalHealth #StateManagementChildrenAndFamilies #StateWorkforceManagement #StateManagementEconomicDevelopment #StateAndLifeSatisfaction #StateandLocalManagementNews #BarrettandGreeneInc