Alabama is one of the worst states for women to live in the country.
That’s according to financial analysis website WalletHub.com. The rankings were determined by 26 indicators including women’s earnings, access to healthcare, poverty level and homicide rates.
Jill Gonzalez is an analyst for WalletHub. She said lack of education is a foundational problem for Alabama’s women.
“Alabama really needs improvement across the board. It ranked 49th just in terms of women’s economic and social well-being, and Alabama has one of the lowest high school graduation rates for women. A lot of these other things start to make sense when you realize the foundation just really is amiss in the state right now,” she said.
Gonzalez also said improving education for women is the one biggest thing Alabama could do to raise its score.
“If we can get more women graduating high school in a state like Alabama, then we can obviously help them get better jobs, help them start their own businesses, not be in poverty, get that unemployment rate decreased as well. So I think a lot of these are real snowball effects,” she said.
Alabama scored 39 out of 100 and was beaten for last place by Mississippi, which scored 38. The highest-ranked state was Minnesota with a score of 78.