Where you live is vitally important to the quality of your retirement, according to BankRate.com. Even more than that, according to a recent research paper from Michael Finke of the American College, Nhat Ho of Eastern New Mexico University and Sandra Huston of Texas Tech University, your relationship with your spouse plays an outsized role in your happiness in retirement. Their research suggests, they write, that "leisure spending, health status, and spousal and friend relationships have the greatest impact on creating life satisfaction during retirement, while other type of spending and children relationships do not." And if your spousal relationship isn't good before you retire, it's liable to get worse afterward. So if, for instance, your spouse's plan is to move closer to your grown kids when you retire, even though that's on the other side of the country from all your friends and your social network, you may find the idea offputting—particularly if your notion of retirement doesn't include becoming a child minder for the grandkids. So one or both of you may be miserable, even if otherwise your new home has everything you always dreamed of. Then there's that social safety net. Researchers found "no evidence to support that children improve the life satisfaction of retirees," adding, "You, then, should think long about moving closer to your children if you sacrifice your network of friends in the trade." And the states that came off best and worst are sometimes surprising, for reasons like that; the report points out that "the stories we tell ourselves about what will make us happy in the final third of our lives often don't jibe with reality." To try and remove the emotion from deciding where to retire, BankRate reviewed seven relevant features in the life of a retiree, using data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, The Council for Community and Economic Research, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Gallup-Sharecare, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Tax Foundation, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Western States Arts Federation. Those features (and their weighting in the evaluation process) were cost of living (20 percent), taxes (20 percent), health care quality (15 percent), weather (15 percent), crime (10 percent), cultural vitality (10 percent) and well-being (10 percent). Check out the slides above for the 5 best and 5 worst states for retirement.