Connecticut Is Ranked 3rd Best State for Working Dads
/If you’re planning to be a father, or already are, Connecticut is just about the best place there is. A national data analysis ranks Connecticut as the third best state in the U.S. for working dads.
The New England states are heavily represented at the top of the list. Just ahead of Connecticut in the rankings are Massachusetts and Minnesota. Rounding out the top ten are D.C., New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Iowa, North Dakota and Vermont, according to the analysis by the personal finances website WalletHub.
Among the various components of the ranking, Connecticut ranks 1st with the lowest unemployment rate for dads with kids younger than 18, third in highest male life expectancy and fifth in the lowest percentage of kids younger than 18 with Dad presently living in poverty. In the other metrics, Connecticut was:
8th – Male Uninsured Rate
14th – Avg. Length of Work Day (in Hours) for Males
16th – % of Physically Active Men
29th – Child-Care Costs (Adjusted for Median Family* Income)
The website notes that back in 1960, 75% of American families relied on a single income, that of the dad, who spent much of his week at work while mom stayed home with the kids. Today, two-thirds of family households depend on two incomes. The site reported that over 93 percent of dads with kids younger than 18 were employed in 2019, and while millions of men have lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic, they are being laid off less often than women.
WalletHub compared the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia across 23 key indicators of “friendliness toward working fathers.” The data set ranges from average length of work day for males to child-care costs to share of men in good or better health, and were grouped into four rankings – Economic & Social Well-Being, Work-Life Balance, Child Care and Health – to develop the overall ranking.
In the four major category groupings, Connecticut ranked first in Health, third in Child Care, fourth in Economic & Social Well-Bring, and 11th in Work-Life Balance, to land third in the overall rankings.
Among the sub-categories included in the analysis were number of child care workers, pediatricians per capita, school system quality, male life expectancy, parental leave policy, and average length of work day.
“It is difficult to say what the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will be on caregiving and division of labor roles for working parents. Reports have already suggested that women are picking up more of the slack in terms of household and childcare duties to accommodate working fathers’ demands and schedules,” said Rebecca Thompson, Adjunct Professor, Industrial and Organizational Psychology, George Mason University, on behalf of the WalletHub study.
“Given the lack of devoted childcare resources during the pandemic for most households, expectations for parental and household demands have shifted for many working parents. However, it’s unclear what the lasting impact will be when parents return to the workplace.”
The WalletHub analysis was conducted using data collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Council for Community and Economic Research, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Education Statistics, National Partnership for Women & Families, Institute for Women's Policy Research, Child Care Aware of America, Institute for Health Metrics & Evaluation and WalletHub research.
