Best Cities for Families in Texas

There are a lot of great things about Texas - amazing food, low sales tax, and great schools, to name a few. Unsurprisingly, a lot of cities in the Lone Star State are also great for families. We recently published a report on the most family-friendly cities in the United States, and many Texas cities made the top 10.

A lot goes into figuring out where your family will really thrive and feel comfortable. You have to think about the quality of schools, crime rates, and affordability. We did the number-crunching for you!

Methodology:

Our analysis focused on four factors that helped us identify the best cities for families:

Safety: We rank cities by the number of violent crimes and property crimes per 100,000  residents using FBI data.

Housing Cost: To rank cities in terms of housing affordability, we used Census data on median gross rent spend as a percentage of household income.

School Quality: We used data on high school graduation rates provided by the Department of Education to rank cities for school quality.

Child Friendliness: We used data found in the American Community Survey to identify the percentage of children under the age of 19 to identify which communities are the most child-friendly.

Without further ado, here are the top 5 best Texas cities for families:

1. Flower Mound - A+

Located northwest of Dallas, Flower Mound ranked #4 most family-friendly city in the nation. It ranked well for all categories, and had one of the highest scores for high school graduation rate and safety in the nation.

2. Cedar Park - A+

A major suburb of Austin, Cedar Park scores high in child-friendliness and high school graduation rates. It was ranked #26 most family-friendly city in the nation.

3. League City - A+

Located in Galveston County, League City has the highest percentage of children in its community out of the top 5 best scoring cities in Texas.

4. Mansfield - A

The second safest city out of the top 5 best scoring cities in Texas, Mansfield is just slightly behind Flower Mound. However, it scored the lowest for rent affordability.

5. Missouri City - A

Missouri City, located within the Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metropolitan area, ranked well for all categories except for child-friendliness. In fact, it ranked #240 for a percentage of the population under age 19.