Why Families Need Strong Hometowns

Community resources are critical lifelines when caring for kids-and aging parents.

- MEGAN LEONHARDT

MANY OF THE THREADS of family life in the U.S. feel like they're fraying. Finding the right school is a time-consuming slog. Skilled doctors and specialists have months-long wait lists. The quest for aging support systems seems impossible to navigate.

Managing any one of these challenges would be a lot to handle, but members of the "sandwich generation people in their late thirties, forties, and fifties-are trying to do it all, juggling the needs of both their growing kids and older parents.

Nearly half of Americans who are raising children under the age of 18 are also shouldering the responsibility of regularly caring for their aging parents in some capacity, according to a survey conducted by the Harris Poll on behalf of Fortune in August.

Yet where you live can make all the difference to managing these caregiver roles. Well-being is not a happy accident but instead the result of a mix of behaviors and social circumstances that shape Americans' lives, says Michael Rickles, vice president of research at Sharecare.

In an analysis of nearly 2,000 cities and towns across the U.S., Fortune found that communities in the Midwest, West, and mid-Atlantic were more likely to offer better access to quality hospitals and doctors, solid public schools, and support for older residents than in the Southeast and at more affordable rates than in major metros like New York and San Francisco.