Fremont, California has been named the best city to raise a family in 2024.
This is evident from a new one study from the personal finance website WalletHub.
Until this award, it was perhaps best known for its production. For decades it was home to car factories – GM in the past and Tesla today – and it’s also where Steve Jobs manufactured the first Apple gadgets.
The analysis compared more than 180 U.S. cities across 45 key metrics, including the cost of housing, the quality of local school and health care systems and median household income.
Safety was also taken into account – and whether an area offered opportunities for family fun and children’s entertainment.
Also in the top five cities to raise a family, according to WalletHub, were Overland Park, Kansas, Irvine, California, Plano, Texas and Seattle, Washington.
WalletHub named Fremont, California, the best city to raise a family in 2024
With persistent inflation putting pressure on household budgets and childcare costs soaring, many families will be looking for an affordable and stable city to raise their children.
Fremont, home to about 230,000 people, ranked first in the WalletHub survey, largely due to economic factors.
The city boasts one of the highest median household incomes, adjusted for cost of living, at nearly $122,000, the study found.
It also has the fourth-lowest percentage of families living in poverty and the third-lowest percentage receiving food stamps.
The California city also has one of the highest percentages of families with children under 18 (50.5 percent), highly rated public schools, and large acres of parkland per capita.
Only 1.4 percent of children lack health insurance, the second lowest rate in the country, and only 1.1 percent of the population does not have access to healthy food.
Fremont is close to Silicon Valley in California’s Bay Area. At the beginning of the area’s technology boom, companies often made their gadgets there.
The City of Fremont website states: “In Silicon Valley, Fremont is the ‘hardware side of the bay’ and we are proud of that. Apple and Steve Jobs chose to open their first production location here in 1984.
“And the auto industry, dating back to 1960, has produced millions of trucks and cars from Fremont assembly lines. Today, we are home to more than 900 advanced manufacturing companies across our various employment centers, representing 1 in 4 jobs.”
Second on the list of the best cities to raise a family was Overland Park, Kansas – the second most populous city in the state.
It has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, at 2.4 percent, along with one of the highest median household incomes, at over $140,000, adjusted for the cost of living.
It has the tenth lowest separation and divorce rate in the country, as well as a high percentage of two-parent families: almost 82 percent.
Overland Park is also a safe place for children, with a low infant mortality rate and a low traffic fatality rate, according to WalletHub.
Elon Musk at Tesla’s Fremont assembly plant on July 10, 2013
Assembly line at the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant in Fremont on April 4, 1985.
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Overland Park, Kansas, ranks second on list of best cities to raise a family in 2024
Irvine, California, is the third best place to raise a family, according to the study, due to its low crime rate and highly ranked schools.
“Finding the best place to raise a family is difficult, between balancing an affordable cost of living with good education options, safety and enough recreation to keep kids busy,” says Cassandra Happe, WalletHub analyst
However, the city is among the most affluent in the US, with the average home costing more than $1 million, according to Zillow.
Plano, a city in North Texas close to Dallas, came in fourth in the study, scoring highly in affordability, health and safety.
And fifth on the list is Seattle, Washington, which also ranks in the top ten cities for affordability, health and safety.
On the other end of the spectrum, Memphis, Tennessee, received the lowest ranking in the survey.
It fell on education and child care, and had the highest violent crime rate per capita in the study.
Detroit, Michigan, also received a low ranking when it came to raising children in the city.
Although it had some of the most playgrounds per capita among the cities analyzed, it had the lowest average family salary (adjusted for cost of living) and the highest percentage of families living in poverty.
“Finding the best place to raise a family is difficult, between balancing an affordable cost of living with good education options, safety and enough recreation to keep kids busy,” says Cassandra Happe, WalletHub analyst.
‘On top of all these factors, people often want to raise their children close to their extended family.
“Therefore, current or future parents may benefit from limiting their choices to a few of the best cities that are within a reasonable driving distance of their families.”