Harmful human behavior has economic costs, so which state contains the most undesirable human activity? The personal finance website WalletHub recently released its report on 2023’s Most Sinful States and Texas made the top 10.
To determine the list, WalletHub compared the 50 states based on seven sinful behaviors: anger and hatred, jealousy, excesses and vices, greed, lust, vanity and laziness.
According to the website, Texas ranks second in lust, sixth in vanity and tenth in jealousy. The state ranks slightly better in laziness, ranking 21st in the county and 30th for the angriest and most hateful states.
“An unstoppable curiosity and quest for happiness, or at least, satisfaction, leads individuals to bump into ‘sinful’ behavior," said Felipe Lozano-Rojas, assistant professor with the University of Georgia. "I would say that sinful behavior should produce some reward and allegedly some cost. The reward is straightforward, but for the cost, I say allegedly, as sometimes sinful behavior is defined by law or social norms."
According to the report, the top three most sinful states are Nevada, California and Louisiana. The least sinful states are New Hampshire, Idaho and Wyoming. Alaska tops the list of violent crimes per capita and Louisiana has the most thefts per capita.
For the rankings, WalletHub examined the seven sinful behaviors using 47 relevant metrics. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the highest level of sinfulness.
Finally, WalletHub calculated the overall score for each state based on its weighted average across all metrics and used the resulting scores to rank-order the states.
Data used to create this ranking were collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Federal Trade Commission, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and more.
To view the full report, click here.
