In a recent study conducted by WalletHub, South Carolina was ranked the 9th worst state for millennials based on 34 metrics used to determine affordability, education and health, quality of life, economic health and civic engagement.
No. 43 on the list, South Carolina, reportedly has some of the lowest civil engagement in the country, ranked just above Alabama and just below Rhode Island. The state also received low scores in quality of life and education and health, but landed in the middle of the pack when it came to affordability and economic health.
Washington, D.C., Washington state and Utah were the top three districts on the list while Mississippi, New Mexico and West Virginia took the bottom three spots.
Typically defined as people born between 1981-1996, millennials get a lot of heat from older generations who claim the younger generation is entitled, narcissistic and unduly dependent on their parents. But millennials, dubbed the “unluckiest generation in U.S. history” by The Washington Post, don’t have it as easy as boomers and Gen X-ers may think.
Mounting student loan debt, lower wages and increasing costs of health care and real estate define a generation that has been shaped by the Great Recession, leaving them to try and play catch-up with those that came before.
Though millennials surpassed boomers as the largest generation in the workforce in 2019, the overwhelming amount of student debt this generation possesses combined with years of stagnate wages make homeownership a pipe dream for many young people.
“America decided a few years back that if you were born after 1985, you don’t get to own a house,” John Oliver recently joked to millennial viewers on his late-night show Last Week Tonight. “You do get to rent apartments for the rest of your life, though, as you gradually pay off the student loan debts from your liberal arts degree.”
Yet millennials seem hellbent on moving to places that make it more difficult for them to thrive. Although South Carolina and Rhode Island fall in the bottom 10 on the WalletHub’s list of Best States for Millennials, both states made it on Inc.com’s list of East Coast cities attracting millennials. According to Claire Gibbons, director of global marketing and communications at the Charleston Regional Development Alliance, Charleston’s millennial population grew 48% in 2000-2016.
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