States Ranked For Children’s Well-Being

Key Points: States Ranked for Children’s Well-Being in 2026

• New Hampshire ranks first overall for the third consecutive year: The KIDS COUNT Data Book places New Hampshire at the top of all 50 states for overall children’s well-being, with top-four domain scores in economic well-being, education, health, and family and community. The state records the second-lowest child poverty rate in the country and the highest level of parental employment stability among all Northeastern states.
• The Northeast dominates the top 12: New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut all rank in the top seven. The region’s consistent investment in child health insurance, early childhood education, and family economic support programs produces the highest composite child well-being scores in the country, despite also carrying the highest housing costs.
• New Mexico ranks last overall for the second consecutive year: Persistent economic hardship, severe health access gaps for Native and Hispanic communities, and the lowest reading and math proficiency rates in the country keep New Mexico at 50th. Louisiana (49th), Mississippi (48th), and West Virginia (42nd) cluster in the bottom tier with similarly entrenched structural challenges.
• Texas holds the worst children’s health insurance record in the country: Despite ranking 21st in median household income, Texas records the highest rate of uninsured children nationally, a persistent policy outcome driven by the state’s decision not to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act. Texas ranks 41st overall in KIDS COUNT.
• Utah is the strongest-performing Western state: Ranking 4th overall, Utah records high parental employment rates, strong family stability indicators, and one of the lowest child poverty rates in the country, making it the top-ranked state in the West by a wide margin. Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Alaska all cluster in the bottom tier of the same region.
• The South is the lowest-performing region overall: With the exception of Virginia (13th) and Maryland (21st), Southern states rank predominantly in the bottom half. Deep South states including Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia consistently occupy the bottom ten positions across every domain measured.

How This Report Measures Child Well-Being

The primary data source for this report is the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT Data Book, now in its 36th annual edition. The KIDS COUNT study ranks all 50 states using a composite index built from 16 indicators across four equally weighted domains, drawing exclusively from federal data sources including the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Center for Health Statistics, and the National Center for Education Statistics.

The four domains and their core indicators are as follows. Economic well-being measures the child poverty rate, the share of children in families with incomes below twice the poverty threshold, the percentage of children whose parents lack secure employment, and housing cost burden. Education measures the percentage of fourth graders reading at grade level, the percentage of eighth graders proficient in math, the high school graduation rate, and the percentage of young adults between 18 and 24 who are neither in school nor employed. Health measures the share of children without health insurance, the child and teen death rate per 100,000, the rate of low-birthweight births, and the percentage of children in excellent or very good health. Family and community measures the share of children living in single-parent families, the share living in high-poverty neighborhoods, the teen birth rate per 1,000 females aged 15 to 19, and the share of children living in households where the household head lacks a high school diploma.

Supplementary rankings from WalletHub’s 2026 Best States to Raise a Family study and Newsweek’s 2026 Children’s Healthcare Rankings are used to provide additional context on states where different methodologies produce notably different results.

Top 12 States for Children’s Well-Being in 2026

Source: Annie E. Casey Foundation KIDS COUNT Data Book 2025 (reflecting 2026 policy environment); WalletHub Best States to Raise a Family 2026; Newsweek Children’s Healthcare Rankings 2026.

New Hampshire

New Hampshire holds the top position for the third straight year, a consistency that reflects structural policy investments rather than statistical fluctuation. The state records the second-lowest child poverty rate in the country, the highest share of children covered by health insurance in New England, and a parental employment stability rate that trails only Massachusetts among the 50 states. Where New Hampshire distinguishes itself from neighboring Vermont and Massachusetts is in economic well-being: its low housing cost burden relative to family income means that even middle-income households retain sufficient resources for child-related expenditures, including healthcare, extracurricular activities, and early education. The state’s absence of a broad-based income tax also preserves a higher effective take-home income for families at every income level.

Vermont

Vermont ranks second overall with its strongest performance in the family and community domain, recording the lowest share of children living in high-poverty neighborhoods and the second-lowest teen birth rate in the country. The state’s small population and low population density create a built-in advantage on community-level indicators, because the spatial concentration of poverty that undermines outcomes in dense urban states is structurally absent in Vermont. The University of Vermont and a well-funded community health network sustain strong pediatric coverage rates across the state’s rural communities. Vermont’s weakest domain relative to its overall ranking is economic well-being, where housing costs in Burlington and the surrounding Chittenden County corridor have risen sharply since 2022.

Massachusetts

Massachusetts earns its third-place overall ranking through the highest education domain score of any state in the country. Over 52% of fourth graders read at or above grade level, and 8th-grade math proficiency exceeds the national average by 18 percentage points. The state’s 1.6% uninsured children rate, the lowest in the country according to Newsweek’s 2026 healthcare analysis, reflects over a decade of sustained state-level investment in MassHealth and Children’s Medical Security Plan coverage. On WalletHub’s parallel ranking, Massachusetts places first among all 50 states for best place to raise a family, driven by exceptional school performance, the lowest infant mortality rate in the Northeast, and poverty and crime rates that rank among the lowest nationally.

Utah

Utah’s fourth-place ranking challenges the common assumption that child well-being correlates primarily with liberal social policy or high government spending. The state achieves top-four status through parental employment strength and family stability: Utah records the highest two-parent household rate in the country, the lowest share of children with parents lacking stable employment among the top ten states, and a child poverty rate less than half the national average. The state’s strong religious community infrastructure supplements formal government services in ways that KIDS COUNT’s family and community domain partially captures through low teen birth rates and low rates of children in high-poverty neighborhoods. Utah’s one structural weakness in this ranking is health coverage, where a smaller Medicaid expansion relative to Northeastern states leaves some families with coverage gaps.

Minnesota

Minnesota ranks fifth with its strongest showing in the health domain, recording low infant mortality rates, strong preventive care utilization, and one of the highest adjusted median family incomes of any state after accounting for cost of living. The state’s robust park and recreational infrastructure earns it high scores on physical activity and child health indicators. Minnesota’s racial equity gaps, however, are among the most pronounced of any state in the top ten: Black, Native American, and Hispanic children in Minnesota experience child poverty rates more than four times the rate for white children, a disparity that the composite KIDS COUNT score partially obscures. Families considering Minnesota for relocation should research school district demographics within the Twin Cities metro, where outcomes diverge sharply between suburban and urban districts.

The 12 States With the Lowest Children’s Well-Being Scores

Source: Annie E. Casey Foundation KIDS COUNT Data Book 2025; WalletHub Best States to Raise a Family 2026; Newsweek Children’s Healthcare Rankings (April 2026).

New Mexico’s position at the bottom of the rankings for the second consecutive year reflects a convergence of structural disadvantages across all four domains simultaneously. The state records some of the lowest reading and math proficiency scores in the country, a child poverty rate nearly triple New Hampshire’s, persistent uninsured children rates in rural and tribal areas, and a teen birth rate more than twice the national median. Incremental policy investments at the state level have not yet moved aggregate outcomes, in part because the structural challenges are concentrated in communities, particularly Native American tribal nations and rural Hispanic communities, where state-level program delivery faces geographic and linguistic barriers that per-capita spending figures do not fully address.

Texas’s 41st-place ranking deserves specific attention given the state’s economic profile. With the 21st-highest median household income in the country and two of the nation’s largest research university systems, Texas should place substantially higher on child well-being metrics. Its actual position reflects a deliberate policy choice: Texas remains one of a small number of states that did not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, a decision that has sustained the country’s highest rate of uninsured children through multiple budget cycles. The gap between Texas’s economic resources and its child well-being outcomes is wider in 2026 than at any previous point in the KIDS COUNT series.

Rankings by Domain: Health, Education, Economic Well-Being, and Family

Source: Annie E. Casey Foundation KIDS COUNT Data Book 2025; Newsweek Children’s Healthcare Rankings (April 2026); U.S. News Child Wellness Visit Rankings 2026.

The health domain shows the most dramatic geographic divergence of the four. Massachusetts’s 1.6% uninsured children rate, the lowest in the country, sits next to Mississippi’s figure, which runs more than six times higher. Connecticut leads the country in child wellness visit rates, a preventive care metric that directly predicts long-term health outcomes by identifying developmental delays, nutritional deficiencies, and chronic conditions before they become acute. The national picture on child health has improved modestly since 2020 on insurance coverage, driven by Medicaid and CHIP enrollment expansions during the pandemic, but states that resisted expansion have seen coverage rates stagnate or decline as emergency-period automatic enrollment provisions expired.

The education domain reveals a structural reading crisis that cuts across regions and income levels. Only 33% of fourth graders read at grade level nationally, a figure that has not meaningfully improved in a decade. Massachusetts, at 52% grade-level reading, and New Mexico, at roughly 18%, represent the full width of the national gap. Eight states record 8th-grade math proficiency below 30%, meaning fewer than one in three middle schoolers demonstrate grade-level math competency. These figures translate directly into high school graduation rates, college readiness, and long-term economic outcomes for children across their entire life course.

Regional Child Well-Being Patterns in 2026

Source: Annie E. Casey Foundation KIDS COUNT Data Book 2025 regional analysis.

The West’s internal variation deserves specific attention because it is the most likely region to mislead prospective residents relying on state-level averages. Utah at 4th and New Mexico at 50th are both Western states; the 46-rank gap between them is larger than the gap between any two states in any other region. Oregon (18th), Washington (12th), and Colorado (16th) cluster in the upper-middle tier while Nevada (36th), Arizona (43rd), and Alaska (40th) sit in the bottom quarter. Families relocating to the West should treat state-level rankings as context, then research county-level and district-level data before committing to a specific community.

New York’s 33rd-place ranking, low for a Northeastern state, reflects the structural contradiction of a state with world-class institutions in New York City and chronic underperformance across many upstate counties. The New York City metro’s concentrated child poverty, high housing cost burden, and school district resource inequities between wealthy and low-income neighborhoods drag the statewide average well below what the state’s income and tax base would suggest. In WalletHub’s parallel ranking, which weights urban service quality and education funding more favorably, New York places 6th. The gap between KIDS COUNT’s 33rd and WalletHub’s 6th illustrates how methodology choices produce materially different conclusions for the same state.

What These Rankings Mean for Families Considering a Move

For families evaluating relocation with children’s well-being as a primary criterion, the 2026 data points toward three distinct strategic approaches depending on budget and priorities.

Families with maximum flexibility and above-median household incomes will find the strongest child outcomes in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts. All three combine top-five overall rankings with low crime rates, high school performance, and strong pediatric healthcare infrastructure. The trade-off is housing cost: median home prices in the Boston metro and greater Burlington exceed $500,000, and New Hampshire’s southern tier communities bordering Massachusetts have appreciated sharply since 2020 as remote workers have relocated from Boston.

Families prioritizing child well-being within a tighter budget should consider Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Wisconsin. All four rank in the top 11 overall while carrying significantly lower housing costs than the Northeast top five. Minnesota’s Twin Cities suburbs, Nebraska’s Omaha metro, and Wisconsin’s Madison and Green Bay regions combine strong school districts, low child poverty rates, and median home prices between $250,000 and $380,000.

Families currently living in bottom-tier states, particularly Texas, Arizona, or any Deep South state, face a measurable child well-being deficit on every domain measured. Relocating to a Midwestern or Northeastern state in the top 15 produces statistically significant improvements in children’s educational outcomes, health coverage access, and community stability within the first school cycle, an argument supported by the decades of mobility research embedded in KIDS COUNT’s longitudinal dataset.

FAQ: States Ranked for Children’s Well-Being 2026

What state is best for raising children in 2026?

New Hampshire ranks first for children’s well-being for the third consecutive year in the KIDS COUNT Data Book, placing in the top four on all four domain scores: economic well-being, education, health, and family and community. Vermont and Massachusetts rank second and third. For families who prioritize education specifically, Massachusetts leads the country in reading and math proficiency. For families who prioritize healthcare access, Massachusetts also records the lowest uninsured children rate in the country at 1.6%. For families prioritizing affordability within the top tier, New Hampshire and Vermont offer stronger purchasing power than Massachusetts while remaining top-five overall.

What is the worst state for children’s well-being in 2026?

New Mexico ranks last (50th) for the second consecutive year, recording bottom-tier scores across all four KIDS COUNT domains. The state’s child poverty rate, reading and math proficiency figures, health insurance coverage rates, and teen birth rates all rank among the lowest in the country. Louisiana (49th), Mississippi (48th), and Kentucky (47th) follow closely, all anchored by persistent economic hardship and limited state-level investment in child health and education infrastructure.

Why does Texas rank so low despite its strong economy?

Texas ranks 41st because its well-being deficit is concentrated in the health domain, specifically children’s insurance coverage. The state records the highest uninsured children rate in the country, a direct consequence of Texas’s decision not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Without insurance coverage, preventive care utilization, early intervention rates, and long-term health outcomes for Texas children trail every Medicaid-expansion state by measurable margins. Texas’s strong economic performance has not translated into child well-being gains because the policy infrastructure that delivers those gains, principally Medicaid expansion and universal pre-K, has not been implemented at the state level.

Which states improved the most in the 2026 rankings?

Nebraska broke into WalletHub’s top five for the first time in 2026, driven by improvements in affordability metrics and family stability indicators. Illinois improved on the child poverty indicator within the KIDS COUNT framework, driven by state-level SNAP expansion and increased early childhood education enrollment in Chicago. Rhode Island improved in the health domain, recording higher insurance coverage rates following a state-level CHIP outreach campaign. Alaska fell the most dramatically, dropping 22 positions in the ConsumerAffairs public school ranking after continued declines in college retention and four-year graduation rates.

How do children’s well-being rankings relate to school quality rankings?

The two rankings correlate strongly but measure different things. School quality rankings assess institutional performance, including test scores, teacher credentials, and per-student spending. Child well-being rankings measure outcomes across a child’s entire life environment, including health, family economic security, and community stability. A state can rank highly on school quality while ranking lower on overall child well-being if poverty rates, health coverage gaps, or family instability undermine what schools can accomplish. Indiana demonstrates this split: it ranks 10th for university quality (Purdue, Indiana University) yet 31st in overall child well-being, because economic conditions for families with children trail the quality of the institutions serving them.

What does KIDS COUNT measure and who produces it?

The KIDS COUNT Data Book is published annually by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a Baltimore-based private philanthropy focused on disadvantaged children and families. Now in its 36th year, the report ranks all 50 states using 16 indicators across four domains: economic well-being, education, health, and family and community. All 16 indicators draw from federal data sources, principally the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Center for Health Statistics, and the National Center for Education Statistics, making the rankings directly comparable across years and states. The complete dataset is publicly accessible through the KIDS COUNT Data Center at datacenter.aecf.org.

Which states offer the best combination of child well-being and housing affordability?

Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Wisconsin offer the most favorable balance in 2026. All four rank in the top 11 for overall child well-being while recording median home prices between $250,000 and $380,000, roughly half the median prices in the Northeast’s top five states. Minnesota’s Twin Cities suburban school districts combine top-quartile test scores with median home prices around $320,000 in communities including Eden Prairie, Edina, and Woodbury. Iowa’s Des Moines metro and Nebraska’s Omaha metro provide similar value at slightly lower price points, with strong family stability indicators and low child poverty rates.

References

1. Annie E. Casey Foundation: KIDS COUNT Data Center Rankings 2025
2. Newsweek: Map Shows Best and Worst States for Children’s Healthcare (April 2026)
3. Yahoo Finance: The 10 Best and 5 Worst States to Raise a Family in 2026 (February 2026)
4. Quartz: The 5 Best and Worst US States to Raise a Family in 2026 (January 2026)
5. Social Good Moms: Best and Worst States to Raise a Family in 2026 (January 2026)
6. Mental Floss: The Best and Worst States to Raise a Family in 2026, Ranked (January 2026)
7. KBHB Radio: 2026’s Best and Worst States for Children’s Health Care
8. U.S. News and World Report: States With the Highest Percentages of Child Wellness Visits 2026
9. Coastal Moving Services: States Ranked for Children’s Well-Being
10. National Center for Education Statistics: State Education Data 2025