Here Are The Best Cities In America To Raise A Family

MADISON, WI — The best city in America to raise a family is Madison, Wisconsin, and two of the top 10 are in Nebraska. That's according to a new study by the apartment-finding service Zumper, which ranked America’s largest cities earlier this month based on 10 key factors, including price per additional room, median household income, commute and even dropout rate.

Madison, the capital of Wisconsin and home of the University of Wisconsin, has a lot to offer for families, the authors noted, including the lowest dropout rate of any city in the rankings. Residents often have low commute times, about 19 minutes — take that, New Yorkers! — and about 69 percent of the population is under 45 years old. The unemployment rate currently sits at just over 2 percent.

“Thanks to a large population of younger adults, a strong local economy, and low crime high school dropout rates, Madison scored well above the other cities in our rankings,” the authors wrote.

Perhaps the most surprising find in the study was that not one city in the Northeast even approached the top of the rankings. Syracuse, New York, ranked the highest of large cities in that region at 25. The authors noted that many cities in the Northeast have large populations of young people and were dragged down by higher spending on mortgages, long commutes, and high child care costs.

Also notable: The Midwest and South dominated the rankings. Nine of the 10 best cities to raise a family were either in the Midwest or the South, largely due to lower mortgage expenses for homeowners, short commutes, strong local economies and lower child care costs.

Here are the top 10 cities for raising a family:

1. Madison, WI
2. Lincoln, NE
3. Lexington, KY
4. Boise, ID
5. Tallahassee, FL
6. Raleigh, NC
7. Omaha, NE
8. Des Moines, IA
9. Austin, TX
10. Lubbock, TX

Zumper, based in San Francisco, created the rankings by looking at the 100 cities in its monthly rent reports. That list was then narrowed down to 95 cities becasuse several either had incomplete data or overlapped with one another in the census data. The key factors in the rankings were each equally weighted and then normalized to determine a final score.

Click here to see the full rankings and methodology.

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