A newly-published ranking of states judges Alabama to be the 50th best – or 2nd worst – state in which to have a baby.
The ranking, developed by the personal finance website WalletHub, compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia using four categories: cost, health care, baby-friendliness and family-friendliness.
Its cost metric includes things like average cost of insurance premiums, cost of newborn screening and average annual cost of early childcare.
The health care metric includes things like infant mortality rate, rate of pre-term births and number of pediatricians per capita, while the baby-friendliness metric looks at things like a state’s parental leave policy and child care centers per capita, among others.
Each state’s family-friendliness ranking is based upon another WalletHub study published earlier this year about the best states to raise a family.
According to the ranking, the best five states for having a baby are Vermont, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire and North Dakota, respectively. The worst five are Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana and Oklahoma.
Though Alabama scores low in the major categories, having the highest infant mortality rate among states, it has among the lowest average annual infant care costs.
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