Ranking Pegs Best Cities For People With Disabilities

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A new analysis is factoring everything from cost of living to the effectiveness of state Medicaid programs to assess which U.S. cities are most ideal for people with disabilities to call home.

The ranking out this week from the personal-finance website WalletHub names Minneapolis the best city for this population followed by Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Columbia, Md., and Huntington Beach, Calif.

More than 180 cities were evaluated using 34 metrics of disability friendliness, all fitting into three basic categories — economy, quality of life and health care.

Some factors including the employment rate for people with disabilities, the share of people with disabilities and the percentage of people vaccinated against COVID-19 were given extra weight.

Other considerations for the ranking were the availability of professionals like home health aides, special educators, doctors and therapists as well as wheelchair accessibility, the graduation rate for students with disabilities and earnings for people with disabilities.

WalletHub said it culled government data, information from disability nonprofits and other sources to compile the list.

Gulfport, Miss. came in last in the ranking. Other poor performing cities include Mobile, Ala., Tallahassee, Fla., Winston-Salem, N.C., Montgomery, Ala. and Jackson, Miss.

Published on 30 septembre 2022
By Shaun Heasley