Missouri is better than the national average in some comparisons with other states but worse than the average in other areas.
Those are the facts included in a 33-page report State Auditor Nicole Galloway released Monday called "Missouri Statewide Performance Indicators: A National Comparison."
Among the items included in the report:
Missouri's median household income in 2014, $48,363, ranked 36th among all 50 states, where the national average was $53,657. Maryland topped the list at $73,971. Mississippi was last at $39,680.
The job growth rate, 1.6 percent, is tied with five other states for 22nd, with the national average of 2.1 percent, while Missouri's unemployment rate, 4.4 percent, ranked 19th best, above the U.S. average of 5.0 percent. North Dakota topped both lists, while Mississippi reported no job growth in 2014, and New Mexico's 6.7 percent unemployment rate was the nation's worst.
Missouri ranked 48th in state and local tax revenues as a percentage of personal income, in 2013 at 7.55 percent. The national average was 9.46 percent. Alaska topped the list, with 36.40 percent, while New Hampshire was at the bottom with 6.96 percent.
The Show-Me State's lowest-in-the-nation tobacco tax, 17 cents a pack of cigarettes, is almost half the next-lowest tax, Virginia's 30 cents. The U.S. average in 2016 is $1.53 per pack, and the nation's highest tax rate is New York state's $4.35.
Missouri's motor fuels tax, 17.3 cents-per-gallon of gasoline and diesel, ranked 44th in the nation this year, while the national average is 25.3 cents a gallon. Pennsylvania charges the most fuels tax, 50.3 cents a gallon, while Alaska's 9 cents is at the bottom of the list.
Missouri in 2014 ranked 28th in the percentage of the population earning high school diplomas at 88.9 percent. The worst state was California, 82.1 percent, and Alaska's 92.9 percent was best among the 50 states. The U.S. average was 86.9 percent.
But that same year, Missouri's 27.5 percent of the population with a bachelor's degree ranked 32nd across the country, while the national average was 30.1 percent. Massachusetts led all states with 41.2 percent holding bachelor's degrees, and West Virginia's 19.2 percent trailed the country.
"The objective of this report was to present compiled comparative data on various policy and performance issue areas," Galloway wrote in a letter to Gov. Jay Nixon and lawmakers.
She said the report should:
Provide comparative information to legislators, other elected officials and citizens.
Allow the comparative data and rankings to stand alone as indicators, without the auditors commenting or drawing conclusions, as they would do in a regular audit report.
Have a technical format that provides information - and some trends - without presumptions or findings.
The report covers 25 different comparisons with other states, divided among six categories: Economy, education, civic involvement, health, crime and transportation.
"Many policymakers have found that monitoring performance indicators can provide valuable information regarding policy development, as well as government action," Galloway noted in her letter. "Comparative analysis can serve to help measure progress made in relation to others and is becoming increasingly more important for generally establishing the direction states are headed in a variety of policy areas."
Galloway said the information came from a variety of sources and was collected for the report by the University of Missouri-Columbia's Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs' Institute of Public Policy.
The complete report is available online at auditor.mo.gov under Recent News.