Comparison
Washington, D.C. vs New Jersey
They differ most on population health — New Jersey leads by 39 points. One comparable public-health read, asked the same way of every state.
This ordering turns on the weighting
The 8 pillars are averaged equally, which is declared rather than tuned. 20,000 other weightings were drawn and the whole table re-ranked under each; restricted to the ones a person could defend — every pillar between 6.25% and 25% of the total — Washington, D.C. ranks between 6 and 33 and New Jersey between 9 and 36. Washington, D.C. is published ahead of New Jersey at 15 against 18, but 6,435 of those 20,000 weightings — 32.2% — put New Jersey first. The ordering of these two is a property of the weighting as much as of the states. Read the pillars below instead: those are measured, and the weighting does not touch them.
875 of the 1,275 possible pairings of these 51 jurisdictions are reversed by some defensible weighting. Most comparisons a reader can build on this site do not have a defensible ordering, and the ones that do are worth more than the rank beside them.
Pillar by pillar, widest divergence first
- 5594Population health39 apart — Washington, D.C. 55, New Jersey 94
- 10068Fiscal standing32 apart — Washington, D.C. 100, New Jersey 68
- 4414Labour market30 apart — Washington, D.C. 44, New Jersey 14
- 419Housing permits and prices15 apart — Washington, D.C. 4, New Jersey 19
- 10088Prosperity12 apart — Washington, D.C. 100, New Jersey 88
- 6476Openness12 apart — Washington, D.C. 64, New Jersey 76
- 4245Starting up3 apart — Washington, D.C. 42, New Jersey 45
- —50Productive basenot comparable — Washington, D.C. no score, New Jersey 50
Tax structure
Washington, D.C.
Individual income tax levied
Corporate income tax levied
New Jersey
Individual income tax levied
Corporate income tax levied
Census Bureau, Annual Survey of State Government Tax Collections. Where a state levies no such tax the survey records it, and so does this — the absence is a fact, not a gap.