Best Places to Raise a Family

By Chen May Yee

Children's Health mag has a new list of best places to raise a family. St. Paul ranked 12th and Minneapolis 18th.

Burlington, Vt. was No.1, followed by Madison, Wis; Fargo, ND; Lincoln, Neb and Fremont, Ca.

(Fargo? Can anyone explain?)

Click here for the full rankings.

I love lists so of course this one inspired me to go through all the US cities I've lived in BB (Before Babies) because you know, I wanted to see if I should have stayed.

New York is 15th (15th?!), Boston 21st (yeah, but we would have to live in a shoebox...) and Phoenix, AZ is 93rd (no regrets there).

Here's what I thought made sense: unemployment, mean travel time to work, fast-food restaurants per capita, air quality, obesity, Superfund sites, sex offenders, violent crime, property crime.

Also, student-teacher ratio, educational expenditures per child, state physical education requirements.

And definitely the presence of zoos, museums, nature parks and parental leave laws.

One or two things made me scratch my head: % of population with advanced degrees? Great if you have one. But if you don't have one and move to a city where many people do, is that better for your kid? I don't know. (Wouldn't it make the job market more competitive for non-highly educated parents?)

Infant mortality. Uhm, not sure how this applies to decisions to move if you already have a family. I'm not saying it's not an important public health indicator, I just think it's beside the point for this particular list.