Conservative states are dominating a list of the best locations for families, a new study profiled by the Washington Stand confirms.
It is the 2025 Family Structure Index that ranks all 50 states based on three variables: “the percentage of married adults between the ages of 25 to 54, the average number of lifetime births per woman, and the percentage of children aged 15 to 17 who are living with their married parents,” the report explained.
Brad Wilcox, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and a fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, said the results follow closely conservative political beliefs.
The top 10 states are: Utah, Idaho, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Kansas, North Dakota, Iowa, Texas and Minnesota.
Minnesota is the only outlier in the list of states that regularly are among the most conservative in the nation.
The report said Utah has the highest rating on two of the three factors, the marriage rate and percentage of intact families.
The report noted that no state actually met the birthrate replacement level of 2.1, but South Dakota was the closest at 2.01.
At the other end of the scale were the states: Illinois, Oregon, Louisiana, California, Vermont, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, New Mexico and Rhode Island, all regular actors in the race to be the most liberal state.
The report explained Vermont has the lowest fertility rate of 1.35, and New Mexico had the lowest percentage of married adults, at 49.5%.
There actually are 17 states where the majority of teens are raised in broken or single-parent homes, and Louisiana leads that as only 35.9% of teens there lives with his or her own parents.
Aaron Baer, chief of the Center for Christian Virtue, which sponsors the study by the Institute for Family Studies, told the Washington Stand, “At the root of what is hurting our communities is broken families.”
The center’s own report found that there are “devastating realities about the challenges our children face.”
Revealed was that areas with “fewer intact families experienced more violence,” the report said.
Localities where two out of three children are raised outside of wedlock have 12 times the level of violent crime as areas where large numbers of teens live with their parents, the report said. And, the report noted, graduation rates follow the shares of married parents.
The Institute for Family Studies study’s data prove that “family structure is a key driver of economic well-being, and our state is failing to provide the conditions for strong, stable marriages and families,” Michael Geer, president of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, told The Washington Stand.
Tom Shaheen, of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, concluded, “States that support strong family structures reap the rewards of lower poverty rates, better educational outcomes and economic prosperity.”
