This is the Best City to Raise Your Kids—But it Comes At a Price!

Thinking of the factors that make one city ideal for raising kids, a lack of pollution is probably the first thing that comes to mind. But according to a new study conducted by Homeday, parents have another opinion. Good schools and the ability to buy a home occupy the top of the list for the hundreds of parents that took part in the survey.

Taking into consideration their participants’ answers, Homeday separated the study into five main categories: city infrastructure, maternity laws, healthcare quality, happiness levels, activities for children, and expert perception. Then they put thousands of cities around the world under the microscope and based on each city’s final score, selected the best 100 for families. Each city’s final scores were calculated based on micro factors such as unemployment, transportation, safety, and others. Aside from collecting data related to these categories, the people behind Homeday’s study asked 30,000 parenting experts and family journalists to rate how good their own city is for raising a family.

Copenhagen’s final score put her on the top of the list, ranking first among the 100 cities. No big surprise there. A country that has ranked first on the World Happiness Report based on more or less on the same factors is certainly a nice place for families.

But it seems that happiness and a peaceful environment for kids comes with a price. Even though Copenhagen’s score in different factors such as housing, safety, and maternity/paternity law was higher than most of the 10 top cities, when it comes to affordability, the small Scandinavian country had the lowest score.

The cost of living was measured based on cost of fast food, dining out, public transport (monthly), rent (85 meters squared of furnished accommodation), and residents’ salary. Scoring a 5.73, with 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest, Denmark proved to be more expensive than Norway (8.45), Switzerland (8.73), and Sweden (6.55), all lower down on the list.

Even though salaries are quite high in Denmark and the Danish government supports families with child allowances, when the average price for renting a single room in Copenhagen is 4,000 DKK ($632.79 USD) while a two-zone monthly ticket is 375 DKK ($59.32 USD), getting by on an average salary might sometimes be challenging.

See the whole survey here.