Small businesses account for almost half the economic activity in the United States, but starting, maintaining, and growing one isn’t easy. One in five, or about 20%, fail within the first year. A new metric developed by actuarial science graduate students and faculty at UConn is shedding light on the U.S. states and territories where small businesses have the longest life expectancy. The new Small Business Life Expectancy, or SBLE, metric designed by Vadiveloo and his students looked at small business survival rates in 53 U.S. states and territories for 12 durations between 1994 and 2010, using Bureau of Labor Statistics data published in 2022. In their analysis, the team found that small businesses in North Dakota had the longest life expectancy at an average of 6.61 years; the states of South Dakota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nebraska rounded out the top five. The small business categories with the highest life expectancy were management, agriculture, and utility.