{"id":689612,"date":"2026-06-07T10:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T10:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/689612\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T10:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T10:40:09","slug":"wallethub-ranks-these-texas-cities-among-worst-for-families","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/689612\/","title":{"rendered":"WalletHub ranks these Texas cities among worst for families"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re looking for a great place to raise a family, you might want to rethink South Texas. According to a new ranking by personal finance site WalletHub, several major Texas cities ranked among the worst<\/a> in the United States for raising a family.<\/p>\n

So just what makes for a great, family-friendly city?\u00a0WalletHub said it takes the right combination of affordable housing costs, quality schools and healthcare systems, \u201copportunities for fun and recreation,\u201d healthy environments, low crime rates, and positive socioeconomics, including a low poverty and unemployment rate.<\/p>\n

WalletHub looked at data from the 150 most populated cities across the U.S., as well as at least two of the most populated cities in each state so that states with smaller populations could also be included in the ranking. The site\u2019s analysts then gave each city a weighted score across \u201c45 metrics\u201d across overarching categories, including family fun, health and safety, education and childcare, affordability, and socioeconomics.<\/p>\n

WalletHub looked at variables like how many playgrounds per capita a city has, what kind of weather, average commute times, regional air and water quality, access to healthy foods, violent crime rate, childcare services and healthcare accessibility, the number of two-parent households, housing affordability and more.<\/p>\n

Brownsville<\/a>, in particular, stood out for having the highest percentage of families living below the poverty line<\/a> of any of the dozens of cities WalletHub analyzed, which contributed to its low overall score (136 out of 182) in the “socioeconomics” category.\u00a0Brownsville was joined by San Antonio (133) and Houston (139) as the lowest-ranked Texas cities in that category.\u00a0At 158 out of 182,\u00a0Brownsville also ranked as the worst city<\/a> in Texas in terms of affordability, followed close behind by El Paso (155) and Laredo (152). Meanwhile, at 161 out of 182, Corpus Christi ranked as the worst city in Texas in terms of \u201cfamily fun.\u201d Houston ranked the worst in Texas for \u201chealth and safety\u201d at 175, while San Antonio came in at No. 154. Nearby Grand Prairie ranked the worst in Texas for \u201ceducation and child care\u201d at 171.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Among the Texas cities ranked among the \u201cworst\u201d in the country for raising a family were Corpus Christi<\/a> (153), San Antonio (137), Houston (136), Dallas (135), Lubbock (126), El Paso (122),\u00a0Brownsville (119), Garland (113), Arlington (103), Irving (96) and Laredo (91). Only five cities made it to the top half as part of the “best” cities: Fort Worth (87), Grand Prairie (85), Amarillo (74), Austin (22), and\u00a0Plano (4).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019re looking for a great place to raise a family, you might want to rethink South Texas.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,246899,78758,13569,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-689612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-mysanews","tag-mysasotx","tag-mysastaff","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}