PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – When it comes to the best places in the United States to raise a family, Portland ranks pretty high – but not as high as it did in 2022, according to a new study.
On Tuesday, personal finance website WalletHub placed Portland at No. 30 among the 182 U.S. cities analysts ranked for the best places to raise a family.
The list of 2023’s Best & Worst Places to Raise a Family looked at things such as the cost of housing, the quality of local schools and healthcare systems, and opportunities for fun and recreation.
However, in 2022, the same study ranked Portland as 24th.
To score each city, WalletHub evaluated each city across five key dimensions: family fun, health and safety, education and child care, affordability, and socio-economics.
Those five dimensions were then broken down into 45 relevant metrics. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale with a score of 100 representing the best conditions for family life.
Some of those metrics include things like playgrounds per capita, parkland acreage per capita, share of families with young children, public hospitals ranking, driving fatalities per capita, high school graduation rate, child care costs, housing affordability, and share of families living in poverty.
When all those metric scores were totaled, Portland ranked 30th. The city’s highest-scoring dimension was education and child care, in which it placed 20th among the 182 other cities.
Salem also received a score and placed 104th overall.
Seattle placed 11th; Spokane, Wash. placed 78th; Vancouver, Wash. placed 105th and Tacoma, Wash. placed 118th.
According to WalletHub, the top 10 cities to raise a family are:
- Fremont, CA
- Overland Park, KS
- Irvine, CA
- Plano, TX
- South Burlington, VT
- San Diego, CA
- San Jose, CA
- Scottsdale, AZ
- Gilbert, AZ
- San Francisco, CA
To see the full list of cities and an explanation of WalletHub’s methodology, visit WalletHub.com.
WalletHub used data collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, county health rankings, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and other national and local data sources.
