How Does Providence Rank for Young Families in 2016

How Does Providence Rank for Young Families in 2016

Is Providence a good place for couples to raise their young families?

A study ranking cities for key factors like safety, housing costs, school quality, and child friendliness raises significant questions about Providence as a place for young families.

Of the 473 cities ranked — Providence ranks in the bottom 10 percent. Worcester ranks 433 in the 2016 Best Cities for Young Families and received a grade of "D" in the study.

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“..we know that people care about a lot of factors when they’re searching for a home…, but families look for different things in a city than young singles,” said Andrew Woo, Manager, Growth Strategy
at Apartment List and author of the study.

The analysis centered around the 4 factors that are identified as being important to families:

    •    Safety (35%):  FBI data to rank cities by the number of violent crimes and property crimes per 100,000 residents.

    •    Housing Cost (30%):  census data to calculate the percentage of the median renter income required to rent a 2-bedroom apartment.

    •    School Quality (25%): Cities were ranked on high school graduation rate for public school districts based in that city. Comparing schools across different states can be challenging, but using high school graduation rate data from the Department of Education gives us a good estimate of overall school quality.

    •    Child Friendliness (10%): Communities with a greater percentage of children tend to be more child friendly census data was used to score cities based on the percentage of the population that’s under 18.

These factors were weighted using the percentages listed above, and used this index to assign grades and rankings to the nearly 500 cities in the study. 

"Looking at our rankings, Allen, TX took first place (up from second last year), with two Indianapolis suburbs (Fishers and Carmel) in second and third place respectively. Four of the top ten cities were from the Dallas metro. Small to mid-sized cities in affordable states were generally better for young families—cities in Idaho, Texas, Arizona, and Kansas did particularly well," said Woo.

GoLocal’s ongoing coverage on the issues of crime and education in the City of Providence has raised similar concerns. Providence high schools rank at the bottom of Rhode Island's top high school ranking.

In GoLocal's violent crime rankings in Rhode Island -- Providence has among the highest per capita violent crime in RI.