With the cost of raising a child to age 18 reaching well over $300,000, the personal finance website WalletHub recently released its report on the “Best & Worst States to Raise a Family in 2025.” WalletHub compared the states across 50 key indicators of family-friendliness.
Its data set includes factors like the median annual family income, housing affordability, health care quality, crime rate, and school quality.
The best states, ranked in order, for families were Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Maine and Connecticut.
The worst states to raise a family in 2025, according to the survey were, Arizona, South Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Nevada, West Virginia, Mississippi and New Mexico.
The survey’s best versus worst takeaways were:
- Utah has the lowest separation & divorce rate, 1.7 times lower than in New Mexico, which has the highest rate.
- New Hampshire has the lowest share of families living in poverty, 3.3 times lower than in Mississippi, which has the highest share.
- South Dakota has the lowest average annual cost of early childcare (as a share of median family income), 2.7 times lower than in New York, which has the highest.
- Maine has the fewest violent crimes per capita, 7.6 times fewer than in New Mexico, which has the most.