Connecticut Among The Best States For Children’s Development

Do you believe that you're raising your children in the right place in the world? If you live in New England you do, according to a new study.

SmileHub.org has just released their new study Best States for Children (2025) where they've compared all 50 states at how well they've ensured the health, safety and development for kids.

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In order to determine their rankings SmileHub compared each state based on 27 key metrics, some of which were: Share of Children with all 7 recommended Vaccinations, Pediatricians and Family Doctors per capita, Life Expectancy at Birth, Quality of Public Hospitals, Children's Charities per capita, Share of Nationally Accredited Childcare Centers, Number of Childcare Workers per Total Number of Children, Share of Children in Foster Care, Food Insecurity, and Share of Teens Neither Attending School nor Working.

Based on SmileHub's rankings Connecticut is 2025's 9th best state overall for children, 5th best overall in Support System Strength, and the 13th ranked Education System. All of our neighbors in New England ranked above Connecticut in the Top 10 except Maine. Massachusetts was ranked #1 overall, New Hampshire at #3, Rhode Island at #5, Vermont at #9, CT at #9, and the only New England State that didn't rank in the Top 20 was Maine at #22.

Connecticut's neighbors on our Western side did ok, New Jersey ranked at #11, Pennsylvania at #16, and New York at #21. New England and the Tri-State area make up almost half of the Top 25 states on SmileHub's rankings. The worst states for children in 2025? Alaska, New Mexico, and Nevada were the bottom three.