WalletHub released data Monday detailing America’s most caring cities, and the results may surprise you.
“The most caring cities donate a lot of money to charity and have high volunteer rates, but being a caring city overall requires much more than just giving time or money,” analyst Chris Lupo said in a statement released with the results of WalletHub’s research. The team looked at the top 100 most populated cities across the U.S., assessing their citizens by three key metrics related to caring for the community, the vulnerable, and within the workforce.
Metrics included things like violent crime rates, driving fatalities, but also clothing and food distribution, share of income donated to charity, share of registered volunteer fire departments. Child poverty, adoption rates, number of childcare workers, and many other key variables were used to determine the findings.
Top Most Caring Cities In 2024
Virginia Beach, Virginia, ranked as the #1 most caring city, with an overall score of 68.61, followed closely by Scottsdale, AZ, Boston, MA, Gilbert, AZ, and Chesapeake, VA. Fremont and San Francisco ranked #6 and #7 respectively, while many other California cities ranked in the Top 20. Many of these places are tech hubs, like San Jose, Irvine, as well as Chula Vista and Santa Ana.
The least caring cities were Birmingham, AL (#100), Baton Rouge, LA (#99), Memphis, TN (98), New Orleans (#97), Detroit, MI (#96), San Bernardino (#95), Tulsa, OK (#94), Winston-Salem, NC (#93), Albuquerque, NM (#92), Houston, TX (#91) and Cleveland, OH (#90)
Stats Broken Down
Fort Wayne, IN, gives the highest percentage of their income to charity. Though ranking incredibly low overall, Tulsa, OK, residents give the second highest percentage of income to charity, followed by Birmingham, AL, and Memphis, TN.
Bizarrely, San Diego, Chula Vista, and Sacramento, CA, give the lowest amount of their money to charity. These cities are only outranked by Pittsburgh, PA, Honolulu, HI, and Laredo, TX.
“The human species evolved large brains because childcare was collective. Individual families were not burdened with constant individual care like other mammals are. Look at any village or small-scale, family-oriented society ever and you will see a pattern of collective care,” said UNC Wilmington sociology and criminology PhD Christopher S. Elliott. “Modern nations reverse the progress that evolution gave our species. Our society is forced through the discipline of the market to pay for everything, including care, and it is a pressure cooker. It is demoralizing. It feeds the debt machines and work machines.”
“There is no such thing as a ‘caring city’ in this society,” he added. But we may disagree. We know you’ve got stories of greatness, power, faith and purpose from 2024 just waiting to uplift others into His grace.
Here’s the full list:
