Best and Worst States to Have a Baby<\/a>,” which compared all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on 31 “baby friendliness” metrics, such as affordability, health care accessibility, infant care costs, and others.<\/p>\nThe top five best states to have a baby, in order, are: Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.<\/p>\n
Texas ranked 7th worst overall in the U.S. because of how expensive it is to have a child in the state, and because of its low prevalence of healthcare professionals for mothers and children relative to other states. <\/p>\n
Across the four main categories in the report, Texas landed 47th nationally for its medical costs, 42nd in healthcare quality, and its baby- and family-friendliness both ranked 34th best in the country.<\/p>\n
WalletHub says the average cost for a conventional delivery in the U.S. comes out to more than $15,700, and families with health insurance have an average out-of-pocket cost of about $2,600. The report doesn’t break down state-by-state charges. Still, it ranked Texas 35th and 36th, respectively, in the national comparisons of states with the lowest costs for hospital cesarean and conventional deliveries.<\/p>\n
The cost of childcare is another factor bringing down the state’s overall performance, as WalletHub says Texas has the 23rd “best” annual cost of early childcare on average.<\/p>\n
Here’s how the report broke down the rest of Texas’ ranking:<\/p>\n
No. 27 \u2013 Parental leave policy scoreNo. 27 \u2013 Infant mortality rateNo. 28 \u2013 Rate of low-birth weightNo. 44 \u2013 Midwives and OB-GYNs per capitaNo. 36 \u2013 Pediatricians and family medicine physicians per capitaNo. 33 \u2013 Childcare centers per capita<\/p>\n
According to WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo, expecting families should consider living in the states that “minimize costs while providing top-notch care for both newborns and their mothers.”<\/p>\n
“[The best states] also continue to be good environments for parents even long after the birth, with high-quality pediatric care, affordable and accessible child care, and a strong economic environment that makes providing for a child easier,\u201d Lupo said.<\/p>\n
Mississippi (No. 51), Alabama (No. 50), Florida (No. 49), New Mexico (No. 48), Nevada (No. 47), and South Carolina (No. 46) all join Texas at the bottom of the list as the worst states to have a baby. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas might be a family friendly state, but it certainly isn’t baby friendly, according to a new WalletHub…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[51454,426,82,84,83,17506],"class_list":["post-397775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-best-hospitals","tag-rankings","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-us-news-world-report"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}