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Finding the best place to live can be hard when you're juggling different factors that are important to you. Maybe you want to live somewhere affordable or a place with an easy commute to your job.
Who is going to be living in your home could also be a big factor, especially when you have to think about a place that's good for your whole family. You might need to worry about education, pediatric health care, and even nearby things your family can do for fun.
Wallet Hub took several of these factors into account, using them to find the best—and worst—cities in the United States to raise a family. Are you surprised by which ones topped the two lists?
California Tops the “Best” List
1. Fresno, California
2. Overland Park, Kansas
3. Irvine, California
4. Plano, Texas
5. Columbia, Maryland
Two California towns made the top five cities that are welcoming for families. Fremont, which is part of the Silicon Valley towns in northern California, topped the list with high ranks for education, health and safety, and socio-economics. Surprisingly, it still held on to the top spot despite lower scores for affordability and family fun. In southern California, Irvine was the top-ranked city in Wallet Hub's survey for health and safety. The city near Los Angeles also scored well in education and child care as well as socio-economic standings.
A city in Kansas may be a surprising second-place finisher, but Overland Park gets high marks as a suburb of Kansas City. The city excels in affordability, as the second-most affordable city in the survey, and placed third in the socio-economic ranking.
Suburban cities also did well in the rest of the top five with Plano, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, and Baltimore suburb Columbia in Maryland. Plano got a bump as the second-best city based on socio-economic factors while Columbia topped Wallet Hub's list of cities that were affordable for families.
Midwest and Southern Cities on the “Worst” List
On the other side of the list of 182 cities, Detroit topped the worst places to raise a family. The Michigan city was the worst-ranked in the Wallet Hub survey for socio-economics and close to the worst for education and child care. Nearby Cleveland, Ohio, was the second-worst city based on socio-economic factors and also scored low for health and safety, and education and childcare.
See the list for the five worst cities for families:
1. Detroit, Michigan
2. Memphis, Tennessee
3. Cleveland, Ohio
4. Gulfport, Mississippi
5. Baltimore, Maryland
Memphis, Tennessee, and Gulfport, Mississippi didn't fare well either, as both southern cities ranked low in health and safety as well as education and childcare to sink their rankings.
Columbia, Maryland, may have fared well, but Baltimore wasn't so great, rounding out the top five list of worst places to raise a family with socio-economic factors also sinking it in the rankings.
Factors Families Should Consider
There are a number of issues that families may want to review and decide which ones to prioritize depending on their needs. How many fun things you want to do as a family could be a factor, including small things like playgrounds or bigger fun events like attractions.
Economic factors could also help you decide where you want to live. Housing affordability or median family salary might be good examples of economic issues to look for. Wallet Hub's research for median family salary, for example, found that Columbia, Fremont, and Overland Park all made the top five best cities for median income, which boosted their overall ranking.
On the other hand, Detroit was sunk by having the worst median family salary of the survey.
Don't forget about socio-economic issues, either. Fremont and Irvine topped the list of cities with the lowest divorce rates while Cleveland and Detroit had the highest rates. Those cities also made the best and worst top-five lists for raising families.