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North Dakota among country's "least sinful" states

Exactly how "sinful" is North Dakota?

According a survey by Wallet Hub, North Dakota is the 2nd least sinful state in the country. Jill Gonzales is an analyst for Wallet Hub, which is a personal finance website. She says the survey measured each state across several scientific metrics in regard to the "seven deadly sins."

"We looked at all types of things, and really looked at those seven daily sins as kind of a lead here - so, everything from anger and hatred, which would be looked at as violent crime rates, hate crimes, bullying and cyber bullying. We also looked at things like lust - so, percentage of cheaters, and things like that."

Gonzales says Florida, California and Nevada were the top three sinful states in the country. But she says a state like North Dakota has far fewer instances of violent crimes, cyber bullying or hate crimes. She says North Dakota did rank 12th when it came to the deadly sin "greed," and she thinks there is a surprising reason for that.

"Identity theft tends to have a little bit of a higher rate in North Dakota. And we do see that the population in North Dakota is a little bit older - usually, states with a higher elderly population tends to be more of a victim than others around the country. So that's one area where the population itself can't really do anything, but - if there were more restrictions or more legal actions that could be taken against identity theft, specifically protections for the elderly which some states do have now - that's one area that could maybe decrease those numbers a little bit."

The least sinful state in the country behind North Dakota was Vermont.

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