Executive Summary

About the 2025 Loving Cities Index

Do our cities love our children? From health care and transit to housing and pollution, that question is at the heart of the most pressing concerns facing our nation today.

Research shows what we know intuitively—given the right supports, every child can thrive and succeed, and in the absence of those supports, many children are unable to reach their potential through no fault of their own. But all too often, even those with the best intentions can lose sight of that reality if they focus on outcomes and individuals rather than supports and systems.

The Loving Cities Index, first released in 2018 and now in its third iteration, aims to refocus our nation’s attention on what matters, by providing a holistic and detailed analysis of local systems of love and support across twenty-five indicators. These indicators represent the supports needed for children to have the opportunity to learn and achieve success in their careers, families, and lives.

With each Index release, we select a diverse set of cities across a wide range of sizes and geographies that have a significant population of children of color.

Why the Loving Cities Index Measures Supports, not Outcomes

The traditional means of measuring success in a community, like graduation rates, poverty, unemployment, and infant mortality, while important, are downstream from the systems, policies, and practices that determine them. We define those traditional data points as Community Climate Indicators, and like a thermometer, they can let us know the present status of a community. However, they offer little along the lines of how to change it.

The twenty-five Loving Systems Indicators Schott has assembled provide insight on the inputs and supports that are actively shaping community climate outcomes. These indicators are more active and provide clear focus for creating positive change. If the community climate is a thermometer, Loving Systems Indicators can be considered a thermostat— the means by which we can make real impact.

We group the Loving Systems Indicators across four domains, as shown on the next pages. The strength in each city’s ability to deliver those supports was calculated and scored on a 0-3 point range, shown on each city’s profile as green (3), yellow (1-2), or red (0). The difference between the points earned and maximum points possible gave us percentage scores for each domain and an overall percentage score for the city.

Cities Indexed in 2025

Consistent with the cities indexed since 2018, the majority of cities earned a copper rating, which means they offer less than 50 percent of the supports we measured.

However, this report marks the first time cities scored high enough to reach gold (Boston) and silver (San Diego).

Below are high level takeaways and commonalities across cities.

Loving Systems Indicators: Trends Across Cities

Each city is different, with its own unique geographic, economic, social, and political landscape shaped by its history. However, there are certain commonalities across cities we found during our research that underline larger, systemic forces at play that often originate well outside the city’s boundaries.

These trends are opportunities for cities, advocates, and funders to collaborate together to find common solutions to common issues, as well as formulate new state and federal policies and resources to address them.

No City is an Island

Cities reside within complex webs of economic, social, and political relations that extend far beyond its borders. Many indicators we study are impacted significantly by state and federal policymakers, but we hasten to add that cities can still make significant strides even on difficult policy terrain.

Governance: cities like Boston, Richmond, Sacramento, and San Diego benefit from political cohesion between the party in power in the city and the party in power statewide. In those cases, we see more progressive investments in education, health care, and early childhood care, and cities tend to score higher in Commitment and Capacity. Conversely, loving systems can be blocked or shortchanged by state policymakers when they limit funding or block municipal legislation through preemption or strict restrictions to local autonomy. Cities including Birmingham, Houston, Phoenix, and Raleigh see lower scores in Care and Commitment especially as a result.

State & Federal Funding: some indicators are significantly determined by state and federal funding decisions, like Medicaid expansion, Title I and IDEA funding, and state education funding formulas.

CARE

STABILITY

COMMITMENT

CAPACITY

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Cities with the Strongest Supports Provided

Shared Traits

• Established Infrastructure: Most are older, historic cities with mature civic institutions and public systems.
• Coastal Proximity: Many are coastal (Boston, San Diego, Wilmington, Richmond) — often linked to higher revenue bases and better-funded public services.
• Education & Policy Centers: Cities like Boston and Sacramento benefit from state-level policy attention and research-driven education ecosystems.
• Economic Transitioners: Cities like Pittsburgh reinvented themselves from industrial to healthcare and education.

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Cities Facing the Greatest Challenges to Provide Supports

Shared Traits

• Legacy Inequities: Often long-standing racial & economic segregation paired with underfunded public systems.
• Southern & Interior Geography: Largely located in the South or lower Midwest (except Las Vegas).
• Majority-Minority Cities: Most have high concentrations of Black or Latinx residents, reflecting national trends in policy neglect.
• Lower Revenue Base: Many rely on regressive tax systems and face fiscal constraints.
• Disaster-Prone: New Orleans exemplifies a city dealing with systemic aftermath of disaster and disinvestment.