While falling back from the days when USA Today proclaimed Long Beach to be the most diverse city in the nation, a new list ranking the diversity of cities across the U.S. has ranked it No. 10.
Personal finance website WalletHub, which releases multiple rankings every year ranging from the most LGBTQ-friendly cities (yes, please) to the most affordable cities (uh, no), analyzed 501 of the most populated cities, limiting each state to no more than 10 cities each.
The cities were ranked across five criteria: socioeconomic diversity; cultural diversity; economic diversity; household diversity; and religious diversity. For those curious about socioeconomic versus economic diversity, WalletHub compared household income and education for the former while analyzing the breadth of industries within a city for the latter.
This particular study caps off WalletHub’s series on studying diversity, following previous reports on socioeconomic diversity, cultural diversity and economic diversity.
“America is undergoing an extreme makeover, thanks to rapid demographic diversification,” wrote Hilary Green, one of the study’s authors as well as Assistant Professor of History in the Department of Gender and Race Studies at the University of Alabama. “By 2050, many shifts will happen. For example, while non-Hispanic whites are expected to remain the largest ethnic group, they will no longer make up a majority of the population. But America’s transformation is more than skin-deep—it’s economic, too. Not only have waves of immigration changed the face of the nation, they’ve also brought in fresh perspectives, skills and technologies to help the U.S. develop a strong adaptability to change.”
Houston, Texas ranked as the nation’s most diverse city followed by Jersey City, New Jersey and New York City. Our neighbor to the north, Los Angeles, came in at No. 9.
Provo, Utah ranked No. 501, making it, at least according to this study, the least diverse city in the nation.
Brian Addison is a columnist and editor for the Long Beach Post. Reach him at [email protected] or on social media at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.