California Named Most Diverse US State in New Survey; West Virginia Ranked As Least Diverse

Following a review of all 50 U.S. states across six key factors — socioeconomic diversity, cultural diversity, economic diversity, household diversity, religious diversity and political diversity — the personal finance website WalletHub has released a report detailing the most and least diverse states in the nation.

“We evaluated those dimensions using 14 relevant metrics, with their corresponding weights and subcomponents,” explained WalletHub’s Adam McCann. “Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale. Finally, we determined each state’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order the states.”

According to the WalletHub report, the most diverse state in the United States is California. 

Sara Clarke of U.S. News & World Report wrote that “top-ranked California scored in the top five in three categories: socioeconomic diversity, household diversity and cultural diversity. The state scored highest of any state for linguistic diversity, [a component that is] part of the cultural category.”

According to the report, the top 10 most diverse states in the nation are:

  1. California
  2. Texas
  3. Hawaii
  4. New Jersey
  5. New York
  6. New Mexico
  7. Maryland
  8. Florida
  9. Nevada
  10. Arizona

On the flip side, the bottom 10 least diverse states are:

  1. Wyoming
  2. Utah
  3. Ohio
  4. Iowa
  5. Kentucky
  6. Montana
  7. New Hampshire
  8. Vermont
  9. Maine
  10. West Virginia

“The lowest score for racial and ethnic diversity belongs to Maine, which ranked No. 49 overall, followed only by West Virginia,” Clarke reported. “The Mountaineer State ranked last in two categories: socioeconomic diversity and cultural diversity. Vermont, New Hampshire and Montana followed as the least-diverse states.”

Related: For more recent diversity and inclusion news, click here.

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