NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – Diversity across different aspects of life is growing in the United States. WalletHub recently came out with a study looking at over 500 U.S. cities and how they rank when it comes to household, religious, socioeconomic, cultural, and economic diversity.
Ten New Mexico cities made the list: Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Clovis, Hobbs, Rio Rancho, Roswell, Farmington, Las Cruces, South Valley, and Alamogordo. Santa Fe came in 59th place behind Raleigh, NC. Albuquerque was a little further down the list at 64th, in between Austin, TX, and Tempe, AZ.
WalletHub used information from the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Religion Census and compared the cities chosen among the aforementioned types of diversity using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index method. This type of analysis is commonly used as a general-purpose measure of diversity.
Those five dimensions were evaluated using 13 different metrics, each with its own weights, on a 100-point scale. The study’s sample considered only the city proper and not surrounding metro areas.
