This is the third time the council has released the Measure of America study, which looks to answer the question "How are Americans doing?" by measuring the heath, education and earnings of people across the country.
The study reveals that Connecticut, on a scale of 1 to 10, is a 6.6 or third for education, 6.18 or third for health and 6.28 or fourth for income across the country. When the numbers are averaged, the state earns a 6.17 to earn it the top rank in the country, a mere 0.01 more than Massachusetts at No. 2.
“GDP is a useful economic indicator, but it can provide misleading signals when used as a measure of human progress; GDP has tripled over the last 35 years, but the earnings of the typical worker have barely budged,” Kristen Lewis, co?director of the Measure of America, said in a statement.
“The American Human Development Index measures areas vital to all of us – health, education and earnings – and moves away from a binary us/them way of looking at advantage and disadvantage, as today’s poverty measure does, toward an approach that allows everyone to see themselves along the same continuum.”
The next five states on the list are all on the East Coast: Massachusetts, New Jersey, the District of Columbia and Maryland follow Connecticut on the list.
The bottom five states are Alabama, Kentucky, West Virginia, Arkansas and Mississippi.
Click here to follow Daily Voice Greenwich and receive free news updates.