With inflation leading some families to move to cities with a low cost of living, the personal-finance website WalletHub recently released its report on 2023’s “Best & Worst Places to Raise a Family.” To determine the most family-friendly places in America, WalletHub compared more than 180 cities across 45 key metrics.
The data set ranges from housing affordability to school-system quality to the unemployment rate.
The top 10 best cities for families to call home, according to the survey, were Fremont, Calif.; Overland Park, Kan.; Irvine, Calif.; Plano, Texas; South Burlington, Vt.; San Diego; San Jose, Calif.; Scottsdale, Ariz.; Gilbert, Ariz., and San Francisco.
The worst cities for families to reside in were Wilmington, Del.; Hialeah, Fla.; Baltimore; Shreveport, La.; San Bernardino, Calif.; Newark, N.J.; Birmingham, Ala.; Detroit; Memphis, Tenn., and Cleveland.
The best versus worst takeaways were:
- New York has the most playgrounds (per square root of the population), 0.660762, which is 13 times more than in Hialeah, Fla., the city with the fewest at 0.050668.
- Irvine, Calif. has the fewest violent crimes (per 1,000 residents), 0.51, which is 46.1 times fewer than in Memphis, Tenn., the city with the most at 23.52.
- Overland Park, Kan., has the highest median family annual income (adjusted for cost of living), $127,698, which is 3.2 times higher than in Hialeah, Fla., the city with the lowest at $40,285.
- Overland Park, Kan., has the lowest share of families receiving food stamps, 1.85 percent, which is 22.9 times lower than in Detroit, the city with the highest at 42.31 percent.
- Pearl City, Hawaii, has the lowest share of families living in poverty, 2 percent, which is 13.3 times lower than in Detroit, the city with the highest at 26.60 percent.