Read this first

This page ranks states, not providers and not places to live. Every figure on it is an answer older adults gave about themselves in a telephone survey. Nobody was examined, so none of it is a diagnosis and none of it measures dementia.

Nothing here can tell you anything about the person you care for. A state average cannot. If you are worried about someone, the useful next step is an appointment with their doctor, not a table.

Back to the front page of this site if you would rather read about what support at home actually involves.

Missouri sits in the lower half on reported memory loss

One national survey asks older adults a blunt question about their own memory. Here is how every state that answered compares, and where Missouri actually falls.

Memory Care at Home STL desk. Published September 10, 2026.

There is a particular kind of dread that attaches to this subject, and one of the things it does is make people assume the worst about where they live. Families in Missouri tend to guess that the problem is worse here than elsewhere. It is a reasonable guess and, on this measure, it is not what the survey found.

The question being ranked below is deliberately narrow. Adults aged sixty-five and over were asked whether, in the past year, they had been having memory loss or confusion that is happening more often or getting worse. They answered for themselves, over the phone, and their answer was recorded as given. That is the whole measure.

It is worth being clear about what that does and does not capture. It captures worry, and self-awareness, and willingness to say so to a stranger on the telephone. Those things vary by state for reasons that have nothing to do with how many people are actually living with a memory condition. So read the ordering as a map of what people report, which is genuinely useful, and not as a map of disease, which it is not.

Where Missouri lands

Missouri ranks 32 of 46 on this question, with 11.5 percent of adults 65 and over reporting memory loss or confusion that is getting worse. The confidence range the CDC publishes for that estimate runs from 10.0 to 13.3 percent. Illinois, on the other side of the river, reports 8.8 percent and ranks 45.

The highest figure in the series belongs to Arizona at 17.1 percent, and the lowest to North Carolina at 8.3 percent. Most of the middle of the table sits within a few points of the states either side of it, and many of those gaps are smaller than the confidence ranges printed next to them, which is a polite way of saying that fine distinctions between neighbours in this list are not worth arguing about.

The more useful number is on another page

How many people report memory trouble matters less, for a family, than what happens next for the ones who do. That is a different survey question, and it is ranked on its own page: where memory loss turns into needing help at home. On that measure Missouri sits considerably higher than it does here.

The ten highest in the series

Ordered from the highest reported share downwards. The full table of all 46 follows.

Arizona, 17.1 percent of adults 65 and over
District of Columbia, 16.5 percent of adults 65 and over
Colorado, 15.6 percent of adults 65 and over
Oklahoma, 15.2 percent of adults 65 and over
Georgia, 14.7 percent of adults 65 and over
Nevada, 14.5 percent of adults 65 and over
Tennessee, 14.4 percent of adults 65 and over
Alabama, 14.3 percent of adults 65 and over
Maryland, 14.2 percent of adults 65 and over
New Mexico, 14.0 percent of adults 65 and over

Methodology

Metric: the percentage of adults aged 65 and over who reported subjective cognitive decline, defined by the survey as memory loss or confusion that is happening more often or is getting worse over the preceding 12 months. Sorted highest first.

Source: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Alzheimer's Disease and Healthy Aging Data, resource hfr9-rurv, collected through the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Public domain.

Row selector: Class = Cognitive Decline, QuestionID = Q30, YearStart = 2019, YearEnd = 2022, StratificationCategoryID1 = AGE with StratificationID1 = 65PLUS, and StratificationCategoryID2 = OVERALL.

De-duplication: the dataset files two row families under YearStart 2019, one ending 2019 and one ending 2022. Only the YearEnd 2022 family is used, because it is the only one covering every reporting jurisdiction. The five regional and national roll-up rows are excluded, as are rows the CDC suppressed for small sample size. A jurisdiction enters the file only if all four Cognitive Decline questions carry a value for it, which is why 46 appear here. For Missouri the two row families report identical values.

Pulled September 10, 2026 into engine/data/cdc_cognitive_decline.json. Full detail on the methodology page.

Every jurisdiction in the series

All 46 states and jurisdictions with a complete set of figures in this series. Missouri is shaded, Illinois is lightly shaded. The range in the last column is the confidence interval the CDC publishes alongside each estimate.
Rank	State or jurisdiction	Reported memory loss	Range
1	Arizona	17.1%	14.6 to 19.9
2	District of Columbia	16.5%	13.3 to 20.2
3	Colorado	15.6%	13.2 to 18.3
4	Oklahoma	15.2%	13.3 to 17.4
5	Georgia	14.7%	12.8 to 16.8
6	Nevada	14.5%	12.2 to 17.1
7	Tennessee	14.4%	12.7 to 16.3
8	Alabama	14.3%	12.5 to 16.3
9	Maryland	14.2%	11.9 to 17.0
10	New Mexico	14.0%	11.9 to 16.4
11	Texas	13.9%	12.5 to 15.5
12	Utah	13.9%	12.5 to 15.4
13	Pennsylvania	13.2%	10.9 to 15.9
14	Kansas	13.1%	11.3 to 15.2
15	Louisiana	13.1%	10.8 to 15.6
16	Florida	13.0%	10.7 to 15.7
17	Oregon	12.9%	10.9 to 15.3
18	California	12.5%	10.1 to 15.5
19	Rhode Island	12.3%	10.2 to 14.7
20	South Carolina	12.3%	10.9 to 13.9
21	Connecticut	12.2%	9.5 to 15.4
22	Hawaii	12.2%	10.4 to 14.3
23	Idaho	12.1%	10.5 to 14.0
24	Kentucky	12.0%	9.6 to 14.8
25	Mississippi	12.0%	10.6 to 13.6
26	Michigan	11.8%	10.3 to 13.5
27	New York	11.8%	10.3 to 13.4
28	Nebraska	11.7%	10.2 to 13.4
29	Arkansas	11.6%	9.9 to 13.5
30	Vermont	11.6%	10.0 to 13.4
31	West Virginia	11.6%	10.0 to 13.5
32	Missouri	11.5%	10.0 to 13.3
33	Minnesota	11.1%	9.9 to 12.3
34	Ohio	11.0%	9.7 to 12.4
35	Iowa	10.9%	8.9 to 13.2
36	Indiana	10.8%	9.5 to 12.3
37	Virginia	10.6%	9.6 to 11.6
38	Wisconsin	10.5%	9.3 to 11.9
39	Alaska	10.3%	7.8 to 13.4
40	North Dakota	10.3%	8.7 to 12.2
41	Maine	10.1%	8.9 to 11.5
42	Wyoming	9.6%	7.9 to 11.6
43	Washington	9.4%	8.2 to 10.8
44	New Hampshire	8.9%	7.5 to 10.5
45	Illinois	8.8%	6.5 to 11.7
46	North Carolina	8.3%	6.6 to 10.5

What this does not mean

A state ranking is a poor guide to a household. It cannot tell you whether what you are noticing at home is ageing, a medication, an infection, a thyroid problem, low mood or something else, and several of those are treatable. That is a question for a clinician who has seen the person, and it is the reason the most useful page on this site is the one about raising memory at an appointment.

If you have already had that conversation and are working out what practical help looks like, a day of support at home describes the ordinary version of it, and the comparison of home health and home care in Missouri on a neighbouring site explains which category you are actually shopping for.

Featured placement

New Plan Care

Independently owned in-home care serving St. Louis and the surrounding communities.

Call (314) 405-0887

About this listing. New Plan Care is a client of OwnersFirm, the company that publishes this site, and this placement is paid for. It is not a rating, nothing on this page measured it, and no survey result on this site had any bearing on it appearing here. New Plan Care describes its own services as including in-home support for people living with dementia and Alzheimer's disease. That is a description of a non-medical service: help with routine, meals, companionship and supervision in a person's own home. It is not medical treatment, it is not a diagnosis, and no one here is a clinician. Call (314) 405-0887.