State & Country Tracker
Where does your state stand?
The Moral Decay Index scores every U.S. state and 39 countries across six measurable indicators of social health — religious participation, family stability, crime, substance abuse, mental health, and civic engagement. Higher scores mean more strain, not moral judgment of the people who live there.
How to read this index
The Index is a composite editorial measure, not an official statistic. It exists to make a comparison legible — not to rank people as good or bad.
The scale runs 0–100
A score near 0 means the underlying indicators show low social strain. A score near 100 means the indicators show severe strain. Most places land between 35 and 70.
Six weighted categories
Religious decline, family breakdown, crime and violence, substance abuse, mental health crisis, and civic disengagement each contribute to the composite score.
Direction matters more than rank
A place with a moderate score that is deteriorating quickly may warrant more attention than a high-scoring place that has been stable for a decade.
What it is not
It is not a clinical diagnosis, a government statistic, or a claim about any individual. Categories like religious decline measure participation rates, not the truth of any belief.
Every state, ranked
All 50 states, ordered from the lowest composite score to the highest. Select any state to open its full report.
Where the data comes from
Each category is built from publicly available datasets. Figures are reviewed annually; the composite weighting is editorial and is documented on the methodology page.
- Religious participation — Gallup religion tracking and Pew Research Center Religious Landscape surveys.
- Family stability — U.S. Census Bureau household and family structure tables; CDC National Vital Statistics marriage and divorce data.
- Crime and violence — FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) and the National Incident-Based Reporting System.
- Substance abuse — SAMHSA National Survey on Drug Use and Health; CDC overdose mortality data.
- Mental health — CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and SAMHSA prevalence estimates.
- Civic engagement — U.S. Census Current Population Survey voting and volunteering supplements.
- International figures draw on OECD, World Bank, UNODC, and WHO country-level indicators.
Scores shown here are provisional editorial estimates produced by The Moral Decay Index. They are not published by, endorsed by, or affiliated with any agency listed above. See the Data Sources and Editorial Standards pages for full detail on sourcing and correction policy.