With the COVID-19 pandemic making birthing more stressful than usual and the average conventional delivery costing over $10,000, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on 2020’s Best & Worst States to Have a Baby, as well as accompanying videos.
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. The data set ranges from hospital conventional-delivery charges to annual average infant-care costs to pediatricians per capita.
Having a Baby in Texas (1=Best; 25=Avg.):
- 29th – Hospital Cesarean-Delivery Charges
- 28th – Hospital Conventional-Delivery Charges
- 28th – Avg. Annual Cost of Early Child Care
- 17th – Infant Mortality Rate
- 30th – Rate of Low Birth-Weight
- 31st – Midwives & OB-GYNs per Capita
- 31st – Pediatricians & Family Doctors per Capita
- 31st – Child-Care Centers per Capita
- 27th – Parental-Leave Policy Score
- 25th – WalletHub “States with the Best Health Infrastructure for Coronavirus” Score
