With inflation rising to a point of making it more costly to raise children, the personal-finance website WalletHub recently released its report on 2023’s “Best & Worst States to Raise a Family.” To determine the best states in which to put down family roots, the 50 states were compared across 51 key indicators of family-friendliness.
The data set ranges from the median annual family income to housing affordability to the unemployment rate.
The best states for families were Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, North Dakota, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nebraska, Iowa and Connecticut.
The worst locations for families, according to the survey, were Arizona, Georgia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, West Virginia, New Mexico and Mississippi.
Best versus worst takeaways were:
- Utah has the lowest separation and divorce rate, 15.63 percent, which is 1.7 times lower than in Nevada, where it is highest at 25.79 percent.
- New Hampshire has the lowest share of families living in poverty, 4.60 percent, which is three times lower than in Mississippi, where it is highest at 15 percent.
- South Dakota has the lowest average annual cost of early childcare (as a share of median family income), 7.05 percent, which is two times lower than in North Carolina, where it is highest at 13.32 percent.
- Maine has the fewest violent crimes (per 1,000 residents), 1.09, which is 7.7 times fewer than in Alaska, the state with the most at 8.38.