These Are the Best Cities for Young Families in 2022

Published on June 13, 2022
Published on June 13, 2022
Raising children is hard work, but these cities have plenty of amenities that make parents’ lives just a little bit easier.
As practically anyone who has raised children can attest to, being a new parent is both extremely joyous and extremely challenging. Even though children don’t often realize it in the moment, parents work incredibly hard to provide their kids with the best possible environment in which they can grow and thrive. A good home, school, and community are all important to a child’s development, so these concerns are often at the top of new parents’ lists when considering where to settle down.
While every young family has unique wants and needs when it comes to their ideal city, many look for quality school districts, accessible outdoor spaces, and a sense of safety — both at home and on the road. Of course, raising kids is also a huge financial responsibility, so new parents typically gravitate toward areas of affordability as well.
Every city has something a young family might appreciate, but certain metropolitan areas provide especially appealing advantages for new parents. Curious to see which cities have the most to offer young families, data scientists at Insurify turned to their database of over 4.6 million car insurance applications — as well as data from Realtor.com, Niche, and the FBI — to determine the best city for young families in every state in 2022.
The data scientists at Insurify, a site to compare homeowners insurance, referred to both proprietary and publicly available data to determine the best city for young families in every state. They created a composite score to rank cities on real estate market hotness and affordability, quality of public school districts, access to parks and outdoor recreational facilities, and residential and road safety.
Insurify’s research team referred to data from Realtor.com to evaluate each city’s real estate market hotness and affordability. Cities were scored on Realtor.com’s Market Hotness rank and median list price for the most recent month available. Realtor.com’s Market Hotness Index scores and ranks cities based on days on market (supply) and online views per property (demand).[1] Young families often look for a home that is both affordable and has the potential to grow in value over time. Cities thus received higher scores for having both lower median home list prices and a higher market hotness rank, indicating the area’s real estate desirability.
Quality of local public school districts was determined using Niche’s Cities with the “Best Public Schools” ranking for 2022, which leverages state test scores, graduation rates, SAT/ACT scores, teacher quality, and student and parent reviews to rank 228 American cities by the excellence of their public schools.[2] Access to outdoor facilities and recreational spaces was also evaluated using Niche’s “2022 Best Cities for Outdoor Activities in America” rankings, which rates each city on its quality and availability of the outdoors using key indicators of a location’s environment, such as air quality, local weather, and access to natural amenities and outdoor recreation.[3] Cities that ranked higher on these lists scored higher in the Best Cities for Young Families report.
City safety data is from the FBI’s most recent “Crime in the United States” report.[4] Cities with lower rates of violent and property crime scored higher. To evaluate driving safety, Insurify’s data scientists referred to their database of over 4.6 million car insurance applications to determine the overall moving violation rate for each city in this study — cities were rewarded for having lower rates of drivers with at least one at-fault violation on record.[5]
The following states were excluded from this analysis due to insufficient municipal data: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
The findings in this article represent statistical trends found in Insurify’s analysis of over 4.6 million car insurance applications. The findings of this study are not meant to imply the direction nor necessarily the existence of a causal relationship. Rather, this is a presentation of statistical correlations of public interest.