LIST: The Ten Best and Ten Worst States for Student Debt

Young Americans are increasingly finding that their fist steps out into the world as an adult start are mired in tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to pay for their college education. Now a new list has been assembled to show which states have the best and worst student debt loads.

The website WalletHub.com says that in order to find which states produce the highest levels of student debt relative to the strength of their economies and residents’ income levels, they compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across seven key metrics. Our data set ranges from the average student debt to the unemployment rate for people aged 25 to 34 to the percentage of students with past-due loan balances.

So what are the top ten states for the least indebted students?

  • 1-Utah
  • 2-Wyoming
  • 3-North Dakota
  • 4-Washington
  • 5-Nebraska
  • 6-Virginia
  • 7-Wisconsin
  • 8-Minnesota
  • 9-Colorado
  • 10-South Dakota

And what are the worst ten states?

  • 42-Oregon
  • 43-West Virginia
  • 44-Alabama
  • 45-New York
  • 46-South Carolina
  • 47-Georgia
  • 48-Maine
  • 49-Connecticut
  • 50-Rhode Island
  • 51-Mississippi

So, where does your state sit in the list?

Key Statistics in the study:

New Hampshire’s average student debt is twice as high as New Mexico’s.

The proportion of students with debt in New Hampshire is two times higher than in Nevada.

The student debt as a percentage of income in the District of Columbia is two times higher than in Wyoming.

Mississippi’s unemployment rate for people aged 25 to 34 is four times as high as North Dakota’s.

The percentage of student loans in past-due or default status in West Virginia is two times higher than in Wisconsin.

The percentage of student-loan borrowers in past-due or default status in Mississippi is three times higher than in Vermont.

The percentage of student-loan borrowers aged 50 or older in Vermont is three times higher than in Hawaii.

Warner Todd Huston

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago-based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com, BigJournalsim.com and all Breitbart News' other sites, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, and many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs across the country to discuss his opinion editorials and current events as well as appearing on TV networks such as CNN, Fox News, Fox Business Network, and various Chicago-based news programs. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the book "Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture" which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston and follow him on Twitter, on Google Plus , and Facebook.

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