Bringing Up Your Bundle of Joy Costs Less in Iowa

Our friends at WalletHub are back with their list of the best states to have a baby and here in Iowa, we placed in the Top 10 this time around.

Everything is expensive and continuing to go up in price these days, but let's be honest, it's never been cheap to raise a baby. Amazingly, Iowa is one of only three midwest states in the Top 10 on this list. To give you an idea of how they tracked their findings, here is what WalletHub said:

To determine the most ideal places in the U.S. for parents and their newborns, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 32 key measures of cost, health care accessibility, and baby-friendliness.

Where did we rank overall? All 50 states and the District of Columbia were ranked on "32 key metrics" of cost, health care accessibility, and baby-friendliness. This included hospital conventional-delivery charges to annual average infant-care costs to pediatricians per capita. When you put it all together, Iowa didn't do too bad, coming in at #9!

Here's a look at the whole Top 10:

1. Massachusetts
2. Vermont
3. Minnesota
4. New Hampshire
5. Rhode Island
6. Connecticut
7. North Dakota
8. Washington state
9. Iowa
10. Utah

Our highest ranking in any category was "Health Care" at #6. Here's how some of the rest of our midwest neighbors fared:

• 14. Nebraska
• 22. Wisconsin
• 23. Illinois
• 25. South Dakota
• 30. Kansas
• 31. Ohio
• 33. Michigan
• 35. Missouri
• 36. Indiana

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