New York Ranked as the Third Best State to Start a Family

By Mindy Cohn

In a new report released by WalletHub, New York placed third as one of the best states to start a family. 

The ideal city to raise children, according to WalletHub, is affordable to live in and offers quality schools, healthcare, and entertainment. 

To help parents achieve the components they are looking for before picking where to move, WalletHub compared all 50 states across five key dimensions: Family Fun, Health & Safety, Education & Child Care,  Affordability, and Socio-economics using 51 relevant metrics. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for family life. 

Each state’s weighted average across all metrics was used to calculate an overall score, with the resulting scores used to rank-order the states.

The data used to create the rankings were collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Center for Education Statistics, Child Care Aware of America, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Council for Community and Economic Research, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, National Partnership for Women & Families, TransUnion, The Pew Charitable Trusts, United Health Foundation, Indeed, U.S. News & World Report, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, National Climatic Data Center, FINRA Investor Education Foundation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Kaiser Family Foundation, ATTOM Data Solutions, Brandwatch, Zendrive, TripAdvisor and WalletHub research.