Long-term stress has been shown to be detrimental for your health. While it’s probably not possible to completely eliminate stress from people’s lives, there are many individual choices and decisions that can influence the amount of stress that people experience, including where they live, what job they have, their socio-economic conditions etc. . . One interesting bit of data analysis looks at an aggregate level to understand how stress differs from state to state depending on specific economic, demographic and other geographic factors.



Work Stress is calculated from data on work hours, commute times, job security, unemployment rate, income growth and other metrics.

is calculated from data on work hours, commute times, job security, unemployment rate, income growth and other metrics. Money Stress is calculated from data on income, debt, credit scores, bankruptcy, housing affordability, poverty levels and other metrics.

is calculated from data on income, debt, credit scores, bankruptcy, housing affordability, poverty levels and other metrics. Family Stress is calculated from data on divorce rates, single parents, childcare costs, parental leave policies and other metrics.

is calculated from data on divorce rates, single parents, childcare costs, parental leave policies and other metrics. Health and Safety Stress is calculated from data on adult health, depression, mental health, health insurance, physical activity rate, crime rate, and other metrics.

This post shows a map of the most stressed states in the United States. The map is color coded from red (most stress) to blue (least stress) as a ranked list. Stress is divided into several categories including:

Click on the buttons below the map to switch between the different categories.

Data and tools: The data comes from Wallethub’s analysis of data from a wide range of sources including the US Census, BLS, CDC etc.. Unfortunately the data used is a ranked list rather than a set of scores. The ranking doesn’t tell you if a state is 10% more stressful or 10 times more stressful, just that one is higher than the other. Click the link for a full description of their methodology and data sources. The choropleth map was created using javascript to parse the data and the plot.ly open source graphing library to visualize it.