South Carolina Ranks Among the Worst States to Live in for Your Money
High Crime Rates
South Carolina ranks in the top 10 for both highest violent crime and property crime rates in the nation.
Debt-to-Income Ratio and Poverty Rate
South Carolina also ranks in the top 10 in the U.S. for highest debt-to-income ratio and poverty rate.
Methodology
To find the worst states to live in for your money, GOBankingRates used calculations across various factors to find the states that are cheapest, safest, and most likely to succeed for the average person. The following factors were considered:
- Violent and Property Crime data sourced from NeighborhoodScout
- Average Property Tax for a median value home sourced from ATTOM Data
- Average Income Tax Rates sourced from US News and World Report
- Unemployment Rate sourced from the US Census American Community Survey
- Overall Cost of Living, Healthcare Cost of Living, and Groceries Cost of Living sourced from Missouri Economic and Research Information Center
- Average Debt-to-Income Ratio sourced from the Federal Reserve Data Portal
- Poverty Rate sourced from the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Data
- FIPS Codes sourced from the Federal Communications Commission
Each state was analyzed across all the factors and organized into categories to score and sort the data. The categories were weighted based on their importance and combined to find a total score for each state. The total score was then used to determine the worst states for your money.
All data used in the analysis is up-to-date as of August 17th, 2023.
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