Johnson County city named one of the best places to raise a family in the U.S. — again

Overland Park was named the second-best place in the U.S. to raise a family by the online publication Wallet Hub.

It has topped this same list at least seven times in the recent past, but took second place last year as well. Both years, Fremont, California, claimed the top spot.

This year, the Kansas suburb was also named the most affordable place to raise a family.

Overland Park was analyzed with 181 other cities by a panel of experts specializing in family studies, psychology and household finances to determine the rankings.

The other top places to raise a family besides Overland Park and Fremont, California, included:

• Irvine, California
• Plano, Texas
• South Burlington, Vermont

The five places that ranked as the worst places to raise a family were:

• Newark, New Jersey
• Birmingham, Alabama
• Detroit
• Memphis, Tennessee
• Cleveland, Ohio

Wichita ranked 151th place, and St. Louis ranked 160th place.

To determine the best overall place to raise a family, WalletHub compared things like:

• Family fun, which considered the availability of family attractions and recreational activities in the area
• Health and safety, including factors like air quality, access to healthy foods and public hospital rankings
• Education, looking at graduation rates, school system quality and child care costs
• Affordability, accounting for cost of living, housing affordability and wallet wellness, which is basically personal finance practices
• Socio-economics, evaluating foreclosure rates, unemployment rates, the share of families on food stamps and more

In addition to ranking first in affordability, Overland Park got individual rankings for each of the other categories. For family fun, Overland Park scored 115 out of 182 cities. The city ranked 17th place for health and safety, fifth place for education and third place for socio-economics.

The city tied with Columbia, Maryland; Scottsdale, Arizona; Gilbert, Arizona, and Charleston, South Carolina for highest median household income. Overland Park ranked in second place for the city with the lowest percentage of residents below the poverty line.