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Oklahoma Ranked Sixth-Worst State to Raise a Family

Catherine Scott

Looking at 42 different measures, financial website Wallet Hub ranked Oklahoma the sixth-worst state to raise a family.

"We got most of these numbers from places like the Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, county health rankings and aggregated them to come up with this final number, and, unfortunately, Oklahoma ranked in the bottom 10 as far as places to raise a family," said analyst Jill Gonzalez.

Oklahoma ranked in the bottom half of states for about three-fourths of those 42 measures, which fell under the categories of family fun, health and safety, education and child care, affordability, and socioeconomics. The state fared the worst in health and safety, coming in dead last in that category with two measures that stood out.

"The percentage of children lacking health insurance coverage [was] just under 10 percent last year, so that ranked in the bottom five as far as that lack of insurance coverage. Also, not a lot of pediatricians to go around. It ranked 49th out of all the 50 states. There were only two pediatricians per every 100,000 residents," Gonzalez said. "So, obviously, a lot of these children might not be able to be seen exactly when they need to be seen. I think those could really use the most work moving forward in Oklahoma."

Oklahoma’s strongest category was education and child care, where it ranked 31st. The state’s best ranking on any indicator was third in day care quality.

"That’s a direct number from Child Care Aware of America, which ranks daycare quality [not only] on cost, but also on effectiveness, on re-enrollment rates, et cetera," Gonzalez said.

When it came to neighboring states, Arkansas ranked two spots above Oklahoma, Kansas 19 spots, Missouri 21 spots and Texas 25 spots.

Oklahoma came in ahead of Louisiana, West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi and New Mexico.

Matt Trotter joined KWGS as a reporter in 2013. Before coming to Public Radio Tulsa, he was the investigative producer at KJRH. His freelance work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and on MSNBC and CNN.