Valentine’s Day is the second-most popular day to pop the question, and millions of couples are expected to get engaged today. According to The Knot’s 2017 Jewelry and Engagement Study, the average national cost for an engagement ring in the U.S. is $6,351, just under $1,000 more than average national health care spending per person ($5,407 in 2016). And just like average health care costs, the average cost of a ring varies by state. In honor of the holiday, we’ve compared how much people spend on health and how much they spend on engagement rings across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Where are people spending more on a ring then on health care? The map below shows the difference between engagement ring and health care costs; the pink states spent more on rings, the blue states spent more on health.
Methods Note
Health care spending data is the average per person spending on all health care services in 2016 for people with employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) and ages 0-64. Spending data by state are from the 2016 Health Care Cost and Utilization Report and Report Appendix Table A58. Please see Report and Methodology document on the HCCI website for more information about the data and methods. Engagement ring data is from The Knot’s 2017 Jewelry and Engagement Study, state-based data gathered from Business Insider.