Justice
The Neverending Evolution of 'Quality of Life' Rankings
Society has been quantifying the "best" places to live for a long time, but the things we care most about are never fixed.
Lest you think society has only become obsessed with ranking places in the 21st century, consider a three-part series by H.L. Mencken that ran in The American Mercury in 1931: It was succinctly headlined, "THE WORST AMERICAN STATE."
In the impressive tome, which covered some 47 pages across three issues of the magazine, Mencken and Charles Angoff methodically ranked the states (at the time, there were only 48 plus the District of Columbia) on everything from farm electrification to literacy rates to the salaries of teachers to the number of natives in Who's Who in America. (*Blush*: They also included the local circulation per thousand people of The Atlantic Monthly).