Study Ranks Bossier As One of the Worst Small Cities in America

How does Bossier City stack up nationwide when it comes to the elements that matter to your average person? Things like affordability, education, health, quality of life, and safety. Well, not good according to new research.

A new, robust, statistical analysis ranked cities focusing on the primary factors of Affordability, Economic Health, Education & Health, Quality of Life, and Safety. They scored each city individually in each metric, created a composite score, and then ranked all 1,318 cities against each other. Instead of cutting them into single ranks, they provided a percentile ranking for each one.

So what percentile did Bossier City rank in? The 4th percentile. Worse than at least 96% of the other cities ranked.

Here's where Bossier ranked in each metric:

Percentile: 4th
Total Score: 48 (the highest score was 70.99)
Affordability Rank: 898
Economic Health Rank: 1,275
Education & Health Rank: 1,206
Quality of Life Rank: 390
Safety Rank: 1,225

Bossier being ranked 1,225 out of 1,318 on Safety Rank might be shocking to some, but Bossier's crime number aren't that far off from what Shreveport sees. In fact, in a per capita view, Bossier's crime stats are often higher than Shreveport's. The up-to-date crime numbers show that Bossier's overall crime rate per 1,000 residents (49.5) is higher than Shreveport's (46.41) most recent overall crime rate.

Based on the most recent data, Bossier's violent crime and property crime stats both outpace the state of Louisiana's average, as well as the rest of the United States.

This new study to rank the United States 1,318 small cities across these various metrics was put together by WalletHub. The research was conducted by a team of Ph.D. holders, Professors, Lawyers, and Program Directors from across the country. Their expertise is in real estate, finance, business, risk management, real estate development, and public-private partnerships. A team of experts who really know what they're looking at.

Bossier has ranked poorly in these metrics before, dating all the way back to 2020.