State Life Score
Mississippi
Top-5% composite Life Score — grade A+, 98th percentile of the national corpus.
- 66.3
- Life Score / 100
- A+
- Grade (curved)
- #1
- of 51 states
- 98%
- composite percentile
Data updated August 2026
Verify: BEA · BLS · HUD · FBI · NCES · EPA · Census · Report a data issue · Data changelog
The verdict
Mississippi is top-5% composite Life Score — #1 of 51 (66.3/100, grade A+, 98th percentile). Carried by rent at 100/100; held back most by wages at 0/100.
- 98th
- composite percentile
- #1
- of 51 peers
- 96th
- cost dimension percentile
- 0th
- wages dimension percentile
Life Score shape · TOP · BALANCED
Mississippi at a glance
Mississippi is a TOP-band BALANCED state: rent leads at 100/100 while wages drags at 0/100 (FLOOR cost · LOW wages). According to PlainCompare's federal Life Score corpus ranking, Mississippi ranks #1 of 51 states by composite Life Score (highest = #1) and #2 of 51 by cost-of-living dimension score (highest = #1). Methodology.
Where Mississippi sits among all US states
Composite Life Score vs the 50 states + DC
66 Top 2% higher than 98% of 51 US states
Each bar is a band; taller bars hold more US states. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count, share, and where it sits relative to this entry.
Source PlainCompare composite of BEA, BLS, HUD, FBI, NCES, DOL, EPA data
How the 66.3 is built
Mississippi's Life Score, decomposed
Dimension detail
How Mississippi scores, dimension by dimension
Score Breakdown
Dimension Scores
Read with Mississippi
Nearest composite peers and cost poles (TOP · FLOOR/LOW).
Nebraska
ABS(composite) peer at 65.1 (Δ 1.2 vs this state); lower Life Score · grade A vs this page's TOP · BALANCED · FLOOR/LOW.
Kentucky
ABS(composite) peer at 64.1 (Δ 2.2 vs this state); lower Life Score · grade A vs this page's TOP · BALANCED · FLOOR/LOW.
Iowa
ABS(composite) peer at 63.8 (Δ 2.5 vs this state); lower Life Score · grade A vs this page's TOP · BALANCED · FLOOR/LOW.
Louisiana
ABS(composite) peer at 61.1 (Δ 5.2 vs this state); lower Life Score · grade A vs this page's TOP · BALANCED · FLOOR/LOW.
Arkansas (cost pole)
ABS(cost_score) orthogonal peer at 100/100 (Δ 2); cost stamp FLOOR vs this state's FLOOR.
Oklahoma (cost pole)
ABS(cost_score) orthogonal peer at 94/100 (Δ 4); cost stamp FLOOR vs this state's FLOOR.
Read our methodology - how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.
Every figure on PlainCompare is loaded directly from BEA, HUD, FBI UCR, BLS OEWS, NCES, DOL, EPA, and the Census Bureau, no number is typed in by an editor. This state's Life Score is computed directly from the same federal sources used across PlainCompare. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of August 2026.