With Valentine’s Day around the corner and inflation making dates more expensive, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on 2024’s Best & Worst States for Singles.
To help unattached Americans improve their chances of finding love, the site compared the 50 states across 29 key indicators of dating-friendliness. The data set ranges from the share of single adults to online-dating opportunities to restaurants per capita.
They found South Carolina to be among the worst states in America, coming in at #41 overall. North Carolina came in toward the top of the ranking at #15 overall.
Best & Worst States for Singles
| Overall Rank | State | Total Score | Dating Opportunities Rank | Dating Economics Rank | Romance & Fun Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Florida | 66.92 | 3 | 32 | 1 |
| 2 | Texas | 63.99 | 7 | 19 | 4 |
| 3 | California | 62.83 | 2 | 49 | 3 |
| 4 | New York | 62.75 | 1 | 50 | 2 |
| 5 | Pennsylvania | 60.82 | 6 | 29 | 5 |
| 6 | Illinois | 59.22 | 5 | 34 | 8 |
| 7 | Wisconsin | 58.34 | 15 | 11 | 6 |
| 8 | Ohio | 57.20 | 11 | 18 | 9 |
| 9 | Virginia | 57.06 | 19 | 10 | 10 |
| 10 | New Jersey | 56.30 | 9 | 23 | 12 |
| 11 | Massachusetts | 55.40 | 4 | 48 | 13 |
| 12 | Georgia | 55.30 | 8 | 21 | 23 |
| 13 | Minnesota | 55.25 | 22 | 5 | 19 |
| 14 | Missouri | 55.07 | 25 | 7 | 14 |
| 15 | North Carolina | 54.49 | 12 | 22 | 16 |
| 16 | Michigan | 53.81 | 10 | 27 | 22 |
| 17 | Colorado | 52.97 | 24 | 15 | 18 |
| 18 | Arizona | 52.91 | 20 | 16 | 25 |
| 19 | Connecticut | 52.73 | 18 | 45 | 7 |
| 20 | Washington | 51.37 | 16 | 30 | 26 |
| 21 | Utah | 50.27 | 35 | 1 | 35 |
| 22 | Indiana | 50.08 | 29 | 13 | 29 |
| 23 | Oregon | 49.83 | 17 | 44 | 21 |
| 24 | Vermont | 49.11 | 27 | 26 | 28 |
| 25 | Nevada | 48.84 | 21 | 25 | 36 |
| 26 | Maryland | 48.75 | 14 | 40 | 31 |
| 27 | Tennessee | 48.64 | 30 | 24 | 20 |
| 28 | Rhode Island | 48.46 | 13 | 39 | 34 |
| 29 | New Hampshire | 48.25 | 31 | 37 | 11 |
| 30 | Iowa | 48.14 | 40 | 8 | 17 |
| 31 | Louisiana | 46.67 | 23 | 42 | 33 |
| 32 | Delaware | 46.20 | 26 | 31 | 41 |
| 33 | Alabama | 46.14 | 34 | 20 | 38 |
| 34 | Idaho | 45.94 | 41 | 9 | 27 |
| 35 | Montana | 45.62 | 45 | 14 | 15 |
| 36 | Nebraska | 45.29 | 46 | 4 | 32 |
| 37 | Oklahoma | 44.46 | 39 | 12 | 39 |
| 38 | Maine | 44.35 | 36 | 43 | 24 |
| 39 | Kansas | 44.06 | 42 | 6 | 40 |
| 40 | Mississippi | 43.19 | 33 | 33 | 45 |
| 41 | South Carolina | 42.76 | 38 | 28 | 42 |
| 42 | New Mexico | 41.74 | 28 | 41 | 50 |
| 43 | Hawaii | 41.58 | 32 | 47 | 43 |
| 44 | South Dakota | 41.06 | 49 | 2 | 37 |
| 45 | Wyoming | 39.63 | 47 | 17 | 44 |
| 46 | Kentucky | 39.44 | 43 | 38 | 30 |
| 47 | Alaska | 38.87 | 37 | 46 | 49 |
| 48 | Arkansas | 37.25 | 44 | 35 | 47 |
| 49 | North Dakota | 36.82 | 50 | 3 | 46 |
| 50 | West Virginia | 35.59 | 48 | 36 | 48 |
Note: With the exception of “Total Score,” all of the columns in the table above depict the relative rank of that state, where a rank of 1 represents the best conditions for that metric category.
