(WWL-TV)- Louisiana is dead last in a ranking of state’s compiled by U.S. News and World Report that was recently published.

The survey, which measures things such as healthcare, education, economy, opportunity, infrastructure, crime, fiscal stability and quality of life has Louisiana ranked among the lowest in all eight categories.

Iowa was listed as the best place to live, followed by Minnesota, Utah and North Dakota.

Highly-populated states didn’t necessarily fare well with New York at 25, California at 32, Texas at 36 and Pennsylvania at 38.

Louisiana was given poor marks in every category. It’s “highest” mark was 42nd for quality of life. It was rated dead last in opportunity.

Mississippi was 49th, but it scored high marks for quality of life (6th) and crime (16th).

U.S. News did not give equal weight to each category. Quality of Life, the category where Louisiana had its highest, though still very low, mark of 42, was only weighted at 8 percent of the total. Health Care (16.1 percent), education (15.5 percent) and economy (14.4 percent) were given the highest weights.

“For the weighting of the Best States rankings, U.S. News wanted to use an objective measure reflecting the priorities of citizens for their state governments. McKinsey conducts a citizen experience survey on a fairly regular basis that asks Americans how satisfied they are with various state government services and where they think their state governments should focus resources,” says U.S. News of its methodology.