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By Jasmine Laws
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New data released by the personal finance company WalletHub has revealed the best, and worst, U.S. cities for people with disabilities.
Out of the 182 cities that WalletHub analyzed, Minneapolis, in Minnesota, was ranked the best city for those with disabilities to live in, largely due to its high ranking for various health care-related metrics.
Why It Matters
One in four American adults in the U.S. live with some type of disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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Disabilities, some of which can be invisible, impact people's daily life in a number of ways: 13.9 percent have serious difficulty concentrating, remembering or making decisions, 12.2 percent have serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs, 7.7 percent struggle to do errands alone, 6.2 percent have difficulty hearing, 5.5. percent have blindness or serious difficulty seeing, and 3.6 percent struggle to dress or bath themselves, according to the CDC.
Availability of disability care, and its cost, alongside disability-friendly access in different locations, and for transportation, are some key things that can improve the daily quality of life of those with disabilities.
What To Know
Minneapolis ranked highly for health care, according to WalletHub's data, having a good availability of affordable, high quality medical care—with the second lowest monthly health insurance premiums in the country—but also because it has a large number of wheelchair-accessible grocery stores, entertainment establishments and homes.
In second place, St Louis, in Missouri, ranked highly for its significant number of well-respected doctors and nurses, as well as its large share of residents with disabilities and large percentage of accessible parks.
Scottsdale, in Arizona, came in third place, thanks to residents' access to Arizona's state Medicaid program—which is ranked the best in the country, according to WalletHub—and because it has a high median average income for people with disabilities.
At the bottom end of the rankings, Juneau, Alaska's capital, was ranked in 182nd place. It had the worst ranking for quality of life for people with disabilities, and a very low rank for health care. It's ranking for economic factors was slightly higher, but still in the bottom half the rankings for that dimension.
South Burlington, in Vermont, was also placed at the bottom of the overall rankings, largely because of the fact it was ranked worst of all 182 cities for economic factors relating to disabilities.
The rankings were determined based on three key dimensions—economy, quality of life and health care, where each were made up of a number of different metrics.
There were 33 metrics in total, including housing affordability, cost of living, special-education teachers per 1,000 school-aged people with disabilities, walkability, cost of a doctor visit, and many others.
While the metrics had different weightings in the overall score, the three main dimensions were weighted equally. The data was collected as of August 27, 2025, from a number of sources including the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, CDC, National Center for Education Statistics, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and others.
There is "fairly limited data on disability disparities across the country," but it is clear that differences in state Medicaid policies "are huge in terms of state to state differences in the lived experiences and health care of people with disabilities," Dr. Lisa Iezzoni, a professor of medicine at both Harvard Medical School and the Mongan Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, told Newsweek.
However, as major cuts are planned for Medicaid, following the passage of President Donald Trump's 'One Big Beautiful Bill', any disparities "will get worse," she added, as people with disabilities will be "especially" affected.
"I fear that even generous states might cut back on services like personal care assistants, which give people with disabilities the ability to live independently in their own homes," Iezzoni said.
What People Are Saying
Iezzoni told Newsweek: "Cost of living is a major issue. I would add accessible and affordable housing, and accessible and affordable public transportation."
She added: "Some states are more or less generous in whether their Medicaid programs provide support for home- and community-based living. I believe that this type of support in many ways is more important than support for medical services. If you can't live day-to-day in a home and community, that is a fundamental first-level barrier to quality of life."
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