WalletHub’s 2026 Best States to Live In report puts New Jersey at No. 2 nationally, just behind Idaho, driven by the nation’s top safety score and a genuinely wealthy population. The one number dragging the state down from first place is the same one every homeowner here already knows by heart.
New Jersey Is the Second Best State to Live In, According to the People Who Ranked It Second to Last on Affordability
New Jersey landed at No. 2 on WalletHub’s newly released 2026 Best States to Live In report, trailing only Idaho and climbing a full spot from its No. 3 finish the year before. The personal finance site compared all 50 states across 51 individual measures of livability, grouped into five broad categories, and New Jersey’s overall strength came down to a fairly simple trade, elite public safety and genuine household wealth pulling hard against the one number that has defined life here for years, affordability.
Where New Jersey Actually Wins
New Jersey’s strongest category by a wide margin was safety, where the state finished first in the nation, a ranking WalletHub credited to New Jersey’s genuinely favorable crime statistics paired with a high per capita law enforcement presence across the state. That top tier safety score sat alongside real strength in household finances. New Jersey posted the third highest median household income in the country, close to 104,000 dollars, combined with the second lowest median household debt relative to earnings, roughly 27 percent of what residents actually make in a year. WalletHub’s analysis also credited the state for a genuinely strong record fighting poverty directly, noting New Jersey’s fifth lowest share of residents living below the poverty line and its fifth lowest food insecurity rate nationally.
Health outcomes rounded out the state’s strongest categories. New Jersey posted the second lowest premature death rate in the country, the third lowest obesity rate, and the third best overall life expectancy nationally, the kind of consistent, across the board health performance that rarely shows up together in a single state’s data.
The Number Everyone Already Knew Would Be Bad
New Jersey’s affordability score is where the state’s own residents will find the least surprising news in the entire report. The Garden State finished 49th nationally on affordability, ahead of only California, driven by a familiar combination of high property taxes, steep real estate premiums, and dense day to day consumer costs. That single category functioned as the one real obstacle standing between New Jersey and the top overall spot, a gap wide enough that even the state’s elite performance everywhere else could not fully close it.
| State | 2026 Overall Rank | Notable Strength |
|---|---|---|
| Idaho | No. 1 | Lowest median real estate tax rate, strong income growth |
| New Jersey | No. 2 | No. 1 in Safety nationally |
| Wisconsin | No. 3 | Balanced performance across categories |
| Massachusetts | No. 4 | No. 1 in Education and Health |
| New Hampshire | No. 5 | Strong quality of life and safety scores |
Idaho’s own path to the top spot ran almost entirely through the category where New Jersey struggled most. WalletHub credited Idaho’s win to one of the lowest median real estate tax rates in the country at just half a percent, the eighth highest homeownership rate nationally, and the strongest median household income growth of any state, a genuinely different economic profile than New Jersey’s high income, high cost combination.
What the Ranking Actually Means for Someone Living Here
WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo framed the broader takeaway for anyone weighing a move based on rankings like this one, arguing cost of living and job availability matter most initially, but that health, safety, and access to activities residents genuinely enjoy deserve real weight too, particularly for families raising children who also need a strong local education system. New Jersey’s report card checks nearly every one of those boxes convincingly, just not the first one Lupo listed.
That disconnect is exactly why a No. 2 overall ranking can feel almost meaningless to residents currently opening a property tax bill or shopping for a starter home. The data genuinely supports the idea that New Jersey delivers an exceptional quality of life across safety, health, income, and poverty reduction, real, well documented strengths rather than statistical noise. But for households already stretched thin by the state’s notoriously high cost of living, a national ranking built on 51 weighted metrics will always feel considerably more abstract than the number at the bottom of a monthly tax bill, the one metric WalletHub’s own report confirms New Jersey has never quite figured out how to fix.
