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The Best Places to Raise Your Kids 2011

cheap tiffanyNo matter how hard you try, raising a family is complicated, not to mention expensive. For parents juggling concerns about their children’s safety, schools, expenses, and after school activities—and who also need to go to work on top of all this—living in the right place won’t solve all problems, but it can offer their children more opportunities and enhance the family’s lifestyle. In our fifth annual ranking of best places to raise kids, Bloomberg and Businessweek.com shifted our focus from large, urbanized places to smaller towns and cities. Using 2010 data from Onboard Informatics, a real estate information and technology company in New York, we evaluated a total of 5,418 locations nationwide with populations larger than the state median but no larger than 50,000. We considered only locations where the median income is within 20 percent of the state’s median. The rankings put the most weight on school performance and the number of schools, crime statistics, and cost of living. Other factors included job growth, air quality, ethnic diversity, and access to recreational amenities (within the county), such as parks, zoos, theaters, and museums.

tiffany cufflinksThe following places we selected are neither rich suburbs nor havens for luxury living—so don’t expect to find mansions and elite country clubs (although some areas will have them). Rather, these are communities inhabited mostly by middle-income earners that have good public schools, low crime, and resources to keep the family entertained on weekends. tiffany necklace white gold

Click here to see the best place in each state to raise a family. Jennifer Prince, rankings analyst for Bloomberg, helped to compile this ranking. tiffany pendantsNote: All data are 2010 estimates provided by Onboard Informatics, the premier data company in the residential real estate market and a leading innovator of lifestyle search. Data sources include the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the IRS, the FBI, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.