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Pet Ownership Statistics by State [Updated May 2023]
Owning a pet is a privilege that has many benefits and responsibilities. Responsibilities include physical, emotional, and financial, such as feeding, exercising, grooming, and vet care. People commonly own dogs, cats, birds, fish, horses, reptiles, rabbits, and various other specialty and exotic animals. Every type of pet has specific needs, and often, there is the type of person who best loves that type of pet. For example, a “dog person” and a “cat person.”
AVMA Pet Ownership and Demographics
The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) regularly conducts surveys of pet-owning households in the United States and reports their findings. According to the AMVA, almost 59% of American households had pets at the end of 2019. Dogs have continuously been the dominant pet in terms of popularity among American households. At the end of 2019, close to 40% of households nationwide owned a dog. To compare, about 27.8% of households own a cat.
Pet Ownership by State
Of these states, Idaho has the highest dog ownership rate at 58.3%, followed by Montana with 51.9% and West Virginia with 51.6%. Vermont has the highest rate of cat ownership at 44.6%.
The states with the lowest rates of pet ownership are:
- the District of Columbia (38.2%)
- Rhode Island (45.4%)
- South Dakota (46.4%)
- New Jersey (47.4%)
- Maryland (48.6%)
- Illinois (48.6%)
- Massachusetts (49.1%)
- New York (49.7%)
- Connecticut (49.9%)
- Georgia (51.1%)
The table below outlines pet ownership in each state. Any values of “0” indicate that sufficient data is missing for that state’s data point.
- Ownership percentages refer to the percentage of total US households that own some form of pet, at least one dog, or at least one cat. Many households have multiple pet types.
- Ownership rankings include ties between Arkansas and Washington (7th), Illinois and Wisconsin (17th), and Hawaii and Iowa (43).
- Alaska and Hawaii were excluded from some studies.