With October being National Disability Employment Awareness Month and the 2017 cost-of-living adjustment for disability benefits being significantly lower than U.S. inflation, the personal-finance website WalletHub conducted an in-depth analysis of 2017’s Best & Worst Cities for People with Disabilities.
In order to ease the process of finding the best place to live while managing a disability, WalletHub’s analysts compared the 150 most populated U.S. cities across 28 key indicators of disability-friendliness. The data set ranges from wheelchair-accessible facilities per capita to rate of workers with disabilities to quality of public hospital system.
| Best Cities for People with Disabilities | Worst Cities for People with Disabilities | ||||
| 1 | Overland Park, KS | 141 | Cape Coral, FL | ||
| 2 | Grand Rapids, MI | 142 | Fayetteville, NC | ||
| 3 | Denver, CO | 143 | Baton Rouge, LA | ||
| 4 | Salt Lake City, UT | 144 | Shreveport, LA | ||
| 5 | Aurora, CO | 145 | Newark, NJ | ||
| 6 | St. Louis, MO | 146 | Brownsville, TX | ||
| 7 | Chicago, IL | 147 | Winston-Salem, NC | ||
| 8 | Chandler, AZ | 148 | Providence, RI | ||
| 9 | Amarillo, TX | 149 | Greensboro, NC | ||
| 10 | Kansas City, MO | 150 | San Bernardino, CA |
Best vs. Worst
- Cleveland, Ohio, and Columbus, Georgia, have the highest share of people with disabilities living in the area, 20.5 percent, which is 4.4 times higher than in Irvine, California, the city with the lowest at 4.7 percent.
- Santa Clarita, California, has the lowest share of people with disabilities living below poverty level, 9.34 percent, which is five times lower than in Rochester, New York, the city with the highest at 46.96 percent.
- Laredo, Texas, has the lowest annual cost of in-home services, $20,592, which is 3.3 times lower than in San Francisco, Oakland, and Fremont, California, the cities with the highest at $68,640.
- Rancho Cucamonga, California, has the highest median annual earnings for people with disabilities, $38,085, which is 3.9 times higher than in Cape Coral, Florida, the city with the lowest at $9,704.
To view the full report and your city’s rank, visit https://wallethub.com/edu/