Young Family Affordability Rankings

Supported by emerging careers, our young family is headed by an interpreter and a personal care aide—a 26-year-old husband and his 27-year-old wife, respectively. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that over the next years, personal care aides and interpreters will remain two of the nation's fastest-growing careers, which suit the young parents who run our household. The family includes a 2-year-old child and maintains a Low-Cost Food Plan. In order to rank the cities according to annual affordability, we consider our young family's preferred housing characteristics: a house or an apartment that's 1,750 square feet, including two (or three) bedrooms, is a desirable home for our young family. Results are applicable to other households whose annual incomes fit within the range of earnings for the demographic.

We rank each city by calculating the percentage of affordable housing preferred by our young family. Cities are grouped into affordability brackets, based on the demographic's annual household income and realistic cost of living, and then sorted by discretionary income, which is the yearly amount remaining from earnings after covered expenses. Annual household income draws on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics; and the realistic cost of living derives from our formula of seven factors—housing, food, utilities, child care, taxes, health care and transportation. Our full methodology is available here.