Best (And 'Worst') Places to Raise a Family in California? List Ranks Golden State Communities

Having kids leads to major changes. Just ask any one of the hundreds of thousands of new parents each year in California.

It's inevitable that when most people have have children, they'll try to seek the best possible environment in which to raise them. Lucky for us Californians, there are many local communities that are great for families. But which ones are the best? That's a question the people over at the personal-finance website WalletHub tried to answer in one of their newest reports, 2016’s Best Places to Raise a Family in California.

"In order to help families find the best California cities for putting down roots, WalletHub’s analysts compared 240 Golden State cities across 21 key metrics," the organization says. "They range from 'number of attractions' to 'number of pediatricians per capita' to 'unemployment rate.'"

• RELATED: Read full methodology here.

When it was done crunching the numbers – which were collected from sources like the census bureau, the FBI and department of education – WalletHub found that many of the best cities in the state for families are in Northern California. Nearly half of the top 20 communities can be found around the Bay Area, while six of the top 20 are near Sacramento. Five are in Southern California.

Perhaps one of the most notable cities on the list is Eastvale – a small city in Southern California that was only incorporated within the last decade. It was ranked just this week as one of the top four places to live in California by Money Magazine. San Ramon was also included in that list. (The other two, Irvine and Fremont, are ranked lower in WalletHub's analysis)

Here are the top 20 communities for raising a family in California, according to WalletHub:

1. Folsom
2. Palo Alto
3. San Ramon
4. Pleasanton
5. Eastvale
6. Aliso Viejo
7. Cupertino
8. El Dorado Hills
9. Roseville
10. Dublin
11. Manhattan Beach
12. Danville
13. Rancho Santa Margarita
14. Mountain View
15. Elk Grove
16. Davis
17. Poway
18. Rocklin
19. Menlo Park
20. Livermore

As for the "worst" on the list? Here are the lowest 10 of the 240 ranked (with number 1 being the "best" of the "worst.")

1. Bell Gardens (number 231 in CA)
2. North Highlands (number 232 in CA)
3. Rowland Heights (number 233 in CA)
4. Bell (number 234 in CA)
5. West Hollywood (number 235 in CA)
6. Compton (number 236 in CA)
7. Inglewood (number 237 in CA)
8. San Bernardino (number 238 in CA)
9. Huntington Park (number 239 in CA)
10. Oakland (number 240 in CA)

Don't see your community on either list above? Click here for a full list of the main findings.

Here are some more interesting findings, as provided by WalletHub. Check out the infographic below for even more.

• Roseville has the most playgrounds per 100,000 residents, 43.46, which is 93 times more than in San Bernardino, the city with the fewest, 0.47.
• San Ramon has the lowest violent crime rate per 1,000 residents, 0.31, which is 55 times lower than in Oakland, the city with the highest, 16.85.
• Mountain View has the highest median annual family income (adjusted for cost of living), $94,509, which is three times higher than in Huntington Park, the city with the lowest, $29,473.
• Cupertino has the lowest separation and divorce rate, 8.5 percent, which is four times lower than in West Hollywood, the city with the highest, 36.6 percent.
• Manhattan Beach has the lowest percentage of families receiving food stamps, 0.3 percent, which is 119 times lower than in Merced, the city with the highest, 30.5 percent.
• Yorba Linda has the lowest percentage of families living below the poverty line, 1.9 percent, which is 15 times lower than in Huntington Park, the city with the highest, 29.1 percent.

Main image by Renee Schiavone