10 Great Cities to Raise Your Kids

Choosing the best place to raise your kids is pretty daunting.

(Image credit: NelsonNZ/Flickr)

Choosing the best place to raise your kids is pretty daunting. Great schools, plenty of libraries and playgrounds, and safe, family-friendly neighborhoods all come at a cost to parents. Weighing the factors can prove challenging.

We took a two-step approach to come up with our list of the best cities to raise kids. First, we looked for metropolitan areas with high household incomes relative to living costs, a large percentage of families with children under 18, and low crime rates. We weren’t seeking the cheapest places to live, but rather places where earnings potential is more than adequate to cover a family’s expenses.

Then, we honed in on a specific city within each of our top 10 metro areas that’s well-suited to raising kids based on educational factors (spending per student and the quality of local school districts) as well as fun factors (availability of public parks, playgrounds and libraries). We also looked at each city’s average income for families -- as opposed to median income for all households -- to give a realistic sense of how much it can cost a family to live in a place with so many kid-centric benefits.