South Dakota

Reading the South Dakota Life Score

South Dakota's composite score of 59.1 out of 100 — earning a grade of C- — places the state at rank #12 of 51 in the national file. The composite is a weighted roll-up of seven dimensions: Cost of Living (20%), Wages (20%), Rent (15%), Safety (15%), Schools (10%), Childcare (10%) and Environment (10%), each normalized to a 0-100 percentile scale. Because the weights are fixed, the state composite is driven more by how the cost and wage dimensions score than by any single other input — a state with strong cost and wage percentiles can absorb mid-tier scores on schools or environment and still land a high overall grade.

In South Dakota, the dimension readings are Cost of Living 90/100, Wages 10/100, Rent 82/100, Safety 42/100, Schools 30/100, Childcare 93/100, Environment 82/100. Dimensions where the score sits above 60 indicate the state is in the upper half of the national distribution on that input, while scores below 40 point to structural gaps that a state-level policy or geography cannot easily swap out. The strongest input for South Dakota is Childcare at 93/100, which carries 10% of the composite weight. The weakest input is Wages at 10/100, carrying 20% of the composite — the drag this adds to the overall score is mechanical, not a ranking artifact.

State-level scores average urban, suburban and rural geography within South Dakota, so the readings above should be treated as a state baseline rather than as a readout for any specific metro or county inside the state. Metros inside South Dakota are scored separately on the metro pages using the same seven-dimension framework, and individual metros routinely land one or two grades above or below the state composite depending on their local cost, wage and safety profile. For a household weighing a move into or inside South Dakota, the state score is best used as a filter — states that grade below C often rule themselves out on cost-of-living or safety alone — while the metro-level pages remain the right tool for the final decision. All underlying data traces back to BEA, BLS, HUD, FBI, NCES, DOL and EPA on the dimension indicated.