Many of the factors used by adults when they consider the best place to raise a family involve education. Others involve recreation. Still others consider crime and other matters of safety. Yet others come down to climate. The common thread among these is they are subjective.
Whether relatives are close by is another factor considered, one perhaps less subjective. This cuts two ways, however. Not everyone has a good relationship with parents, siblings and the like.
24/7 Tempo has developed a list of the worst states in which to raise a family, using data compiled by the credit reporting and advice site WalletHub. The site compared states across five key dimensions: family fun, health and safety, education and childcare, affordability, and socio-economics. From this list, we picked the worst one based on those measures.
The dimensions were evaluated using 52 variously weighted metrics, including share of families with young children, pediatricians per capita, quality of public schools, housing affordability, job opportunities and security, and separation and divorce rate. Data on the total number of families in each state comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey one-year estimates.
The bottom-ranked states included New Mexico and Mississippi, which both scored badly when it comes to socio-economics. Nevada did rank fourth in the nation for family fun, but other factors dragged it down.
The worst state to raise a family in is New Mexico. Here are the details:
- WalletHub score: 28.95
- Top metric: Family Fun (#38 best in the nation)
- Families: 496,961 (15th lowest)
Click here to see all the best and worst states in which to raise a family.
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