RI Residents Stressed Over Money, Family: Report

It's probably hard to believe when you're sitting in stalled traffic on Interstate 95, but residents of Rhode Island are no more stressed than the average American — or so says a new analysis by the personal finance website WalletHub. While family- and money-related stresses are relatively high in the state, work- and health-related stresses are comparatively low.

The website's number-crunchers evaluated 40 metrics ranging from average commuting time to unemployment rates to separation and divorce rates to the share of adults suffering from depression, and then created a 100-point index used to rank the states.

Rhode Island scored 43.54 on the index, placing it 23rd among the 50 states. But that obscured wide variations in its ranking for particular types of stress: low for work-related (45th) and health-related (30th) problems, but 15th for money-related stress and 11th for those related to family issues.

The 10 most-stressed states, with their scores, are:

1. Louisiana 59.94
2. Mississippi 58.71
3. Arkansas 56.20
4. Kentucky 54.77
5. West Virginia 54.68
6. New Mexico 54.57
7. Alabama 52.19 27
8. Nevada 51.06 38
9. Alaska 49.68
10. Oklahoma 49.48

The 10 least-stressed states are:

41. Montana 36.88
42. Hawaii 35.71
43. Wisconsin 35.49
44. New Hampshire 34.03
45. Iowa 33.73
46. South Dakota 33.18
47. North Dakota 32.67
48. Massachusetts 32.39
49. Utah 31.69
50. Minnesota 26.81