12 Troubling Facts About Arkansas You Would Be Better Off Not Knowing

Arkansas is an incredible, amazing state. It’s got great beauty and greater people. Like all awesome things, Arkansas also has some haters. Those haters are obviously dummies, but there are a few things about our glorious state that we’d all be better off not knowing.

1. In 2014, CNBC named Arkansas the tenth worst state to live in.

2. Arkansas is the third least physically healthy state in America.

3. Obesity: it is estimated that one third of Arkansans need to fight the fat.

4. One third of Arkansas children live in poverty.

5. In 2008, Arkansas lawmakers fixed a law passed in the previous session—a law that made it legal for Arkansans of any age to marry as long as they had parental permission. That’s right, for a few months it was legal for toddlers to marry in Arkansas.

6. Arkansas is the tenth most dangerous state in the U.S.

7. As of 2013, the time of the last nationwide rankings, Arkansas had the fourth highest teen pregnancy rate in the United States.

8. It is technically legal to beat your wife in Arkansas, but you may not do it more than once a month.

9. While recent measures for quality of pre-k education and high school graduation rates put Arkansas in a pretty good place as far as education goes, the college graduation rate is only 39%. That makes us 48th in the nation.

10. Arkansas has the second highest average combined state-local sales tax rate.

11. In 2015, XNA was ranked as the fifth worst airport in the nation.

12. It’s illegal to keep an alligator in a bathtub.

Well, there we are. Now let’s try to forget all of these.

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J.B. VanDyke

J.B. Weisenfels has lived in rural Arkansas for three decades. She is a writer, a mom, and a graduate student. She is also an avid collector of tacky fish whatnots, slightly chipped teapots, and other old things. In her spare time she enjoys driving to the nearest creek to sit a while. If you were to visit her, she'd try to feed you cornbread.