Supplementary Materials for “Judging How U.S. States Performed in the Pandemic Depends on the Metric” - 1. Introduction

To do so, we constructed standardized measures of the state-level COVID-19 mortality rate, the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate, the observed gross domestic product (GDP) relative to expected, the observed employment rates relative to expected, and the changes in fourth grade math and reading scores between 2019 and 2022. [...] In the event of a tie, where two states exhibited the same score, the state with the lower death rank was assigned the lower health rank. [...] In the event of a tie, the state with the lower GDP rank was assigned the lower economy rank. [...] First, we took the weighted average of the health rank and the economy and education rank to produce an all-around score. [...] In the event that two states exhibited the same score, the state with the lower health rank was assigned the lower all-around rank of the two states.