COLUMBUS – Columbus has tried for years to brand itself as the bets place in the country in which to live, work and raise a family, but a study by a personal finance website indicates the city has a lot of work to do on that third category.
In its 2017 list of “Best U.S. Cities to Raise a Family,” WalletHub.com ranks Columbus No. 35 on the list of the nation’s 150 largest cities.
Overland Park, Kan., topped the list while Birmingham, Ala., was in last place.
The site’s editors evaluated by scoring them in 41 areas like the cost of housing, the quality of local school and health-care systems, and the opportunities for fun and recreation.
Columbus was the only Ohio city to make the top 50. Cincinnati was ranked 70th, Akron at No. 109, Toledo at No. 127 and Cleveland was 138th.
The analysts gave Columbus good scores for affordability (No. 25), fun (42) and education (45) but not as high for health and safety (61) or socio-economics (88th), which took into account factors like divorce rate, unemployment and “wealth gap.”
A think tank recently released a report indicating that Ohio’s top earners are paid about 20 times more than the rest of the population.
According to Policy Matters Ohio, the average income in the top one percent of wage-earners in Ohio is over $840,000 each year, compared with $43,000 to $44,000 for the rest of the population.
The data came from a variety of sources, including the Census Bureau, the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Center for Education Statistics and local health agencies.