How do you use USAFacts? 

USAFacts wants to hear from you! Please take five minutes to fill out this survey and tell us a little about who you are, how often you visit USAFacts.org, and more. This survey is optional but will help us continue to provide you with useful articles, data, and newsletters. Thank you in advance for your time and input. 

The survey ends on December 12, 11:59 P.M. PST.


Which states have the most people with degrees? 

More Americans are completing college. Data from 2021 shows that the percentage of people getting a bachelor’s degree or higher has grown since 2011, while the percentage of the population without a high school or GED diploma has slightly dipped. Which states have the most people with degrees? Which have the fewest?

• Last year, 35% of Americans had a bachelor’s degree or higher. Massachusetts was the top state for residents holding at least a bachelor’s degree, at 46.6%. Colorado and Vermont were the second highest, both at 44.4%. However, Washington, DC, had an even higher rate: 63.0%.

• The most-populated states, California and Texas, had some of the highest rates of residents 25 and older without a high school or GED degree (15.5% and 14.6%, respectively). Louisiana (13.3%) and Mississippi (13.6%), states with comparatively smaller populations, were the next highest. 

• Tennessee and Kentucky had the largest increase in people receiving a high school or GED diploma as their maximum educational attainment. The percentage of residents who did not graduate from high school or receive a GED diploma dropped 6 percentage points between 2010 and 2021.

Learn much more about high school diplomas, bachelor’s degrees, and advanced degree attainment by state.  

The data — and data gaps — in city crime rates

Is crime up across the country? Down? According to recent FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics estimations, crime rates stayed constant from 2020 to 2021. But property and violent crimes do differ by location. Here’s the breakdown by city.

• Larceny is about 60% of all crimes in this data, making it the most reported crime in the United States. Larceny and other property crime rates peaked in 1991, reaching 5,140.2 per 100,000 residents, and have fallen steadily since. Even 2021’s rate was almost 1% lower than 2020: 1,933 per 1000,000.

• The FBI has published 2021 property crime rates for 164 cities with populations over 100,000. Of these, Carlsbad, California, had the highest rate, with 11,885 property crimes per 100,000 residents. Bellevue, Washington, and Cary, North Carolina, had the fewest per resident.
   
• Violent crime happens less frequently than property crime. But like property crime, its rates have decreased since the 1990s, including a 1% drop from 2020 to 2021. A 9% drop in the robbery rate was partly responsible for the decrease.
   
• The FBI doesn’t have complete data for all cities, but it released 2021 violent crime rates for 153 cities with populations over 100,000. Las Vegas, San Diego, and Dallas were some of the largest cities in this release.
   
• Mobile, Alabama, had the highest violent crime rate of all these cities, with 2,042 crimes per 100,000 residents. Detroit and Memphis, Tennessee, had the next-highest rates at just over 1,000 per 100,000.

However, this data is incomplete: about 37% of law enforcement agencies did not report metrics to the FBI last year. The Bureau started a new data collection method in 2020 and uptake of this new system has been slow. Learn why (and what the FBI is doing to compensate) in this article.

• The nation has 56,256 electric vehicle charging stations with approximately 148,000 charging ports. California has 15,706 stations, the most of any state, followed by New York at 3,594 and Florida at 3,033. Alaska had the least: 58.
   
• The country has an average of 10 charging ports per 100 electric vehicles. Several Midwestern states have comparatively fewer registered electric vehicles than other states, meaning a higher ratio of charging ports to registered cars. North Dakota has the highest proportion at 45 charging ports per 100 registered vehicles, followed by Wyoming at 41.  
   
• The US must roughly triple installation rates over the next eight years to support the number of vehicles anticipated to be on the roads by 2030. President Joe Biden has committed to building a national network of 500,000 charging ports by that time. The federal government has made $15 billion available to states to develop charging station infrastructure.

Data behind the news

Today, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in 303 Creative v. Elenis. This case concerns a website designer and her potentially having to create wedding websites for same-sex couples, which she says would violate her free speech rights. USAFacts recently tracked the growing number of same-sex marriages in the United States.

The weekly fact quiz has returned. Can you pass it?  

One last fact