Prescott Valley-Prescott, AZ
Composite score across cost, rent, crime, wages, schools, childcare, and environment — sourced from seven federal agencies.
Ranked #352 of 387 metros · Top 9%
Reading the Prescott Valley Life Score
Prescott Valley's composite score of 38.0 out of 100 — earning a grade of F — places the metro at rank #352 of 387 in the national file, inside the top 9%. The composite is a weighted roll-up of seven dimensions: Cost of Living (20%), Wages (20%), Rent (15%), Safety (15%), Schools (10%), Childcare (10%) and Environment (10%), each normalized to a 0-100 percentile scale. The strongest inputs are Environment (72/100) and Schools (67/100), which pull the composite upward, while Safety (22/100) and Rent (24/100) drag it downward. Because the weights are fixed, a metro that scores high on the 20%-weighted cost and wage dimensions can absorb mediocre scores elsewhere and still land a high composite — and vice versa.
Under the cost layer, BEA Regional Price Parities read 98.3 for Prescott Valley — 1.7% below the U.S. average, with rent-specific RPP at 98.8. BLS wage records do not match this metro in the latest OES cycle. HUD's 2-bedroom Fair Market Rent for the metro comes in at $1,637/mo (studios $1,129/mo), the figure that governs housing-choice voucher payment standards and anchors the rent sub-score.
Safety is scored from FBI UCR at the state tier (AZ), which reads 429 violent crimes per 100,000 residents and 1786 property crimes per 100,000 — state-level crime always overstates rural-county risk and understates urban-core risk inside a single metro, so the safety score should be read as a regional baseline, not a street-level reading. School quality rolls up from NCES at 17.7:1 statewide student-teacher ratio with 25.9% charter share — a structural signal, not a performance measure. Childcare uses DOL center-based infant cost of $11,301/yr, a line item that can shift a household's real cost-of-living picture more than headline RPP. Environment draws on EPA records including 13 Superfund sites tracked for AZ. Compared against ranks #349 through #355 in the table below, Prescott Valley's position is driven by the dimension weights above — not by any single metric — which is why the radar and sub-scores are worth more attention than the composite.
Score Breakdown
Dimension Scores
Top Strengths
Areas for Improvement
Key Data Points
Crime, schools, childcare, and environment data shown at state level where metro-specific data is unavailable.
Compare Prescott Valley With...
Ranking Context
Prescott Valley is in the top 9% of U.S. metros. Here's where it falls in the national rankings.
| Rank | Metro | Score | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| #349 | Lake Havasu City-Kingman, AZ | 38.2 | F |
| #350 | Bremerton-Silverdale-Port Orchard, WA | 38.2 | F |
| #351 | Fresno, CA | 38.3 | F |
| #352 | Prescott Valley-Prescott, AZ | 38.0 | F |
| #353 | Bridgeport-Stamford-Danbury, CT Metropolitan Statistical Area | 37.7 | F |
| #354 | Kahului-Wailuku, HI | 37.7 | F |
| #355 | Lexington Park, MD | 37.7 | F |
Similar-Scoring Metros
AZ Metro Scores
Explore Prescott Valley Data
Planning a Move to Prescott Valley? Get the Full Relocation Guide
This Life Score page compares Prescott Valley on schools, crime, rent, demographics, and climate — useful when shortlisting metros side-by-side. Once Prescott Valley is on your shortlist, the next layer of decision-making is cost of living, move-in checklist, climate exposure, and 7-dimension relocation intelligence (career, healthcare, lifestyle, infrastructure). PlainRelocate covers exactly that, with the same 387-metro coverage and matching slug — start with the Life Score here, then drill into relocation specifics there.
Get the full relocation guide for Prescott Valley on PlainRelocate →
Frequently Asked Questions
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Research Guides
Data from BEA, HUD, FBI UCR, BLS OES, NCES, DOL, and EPA. Not affiliated with the U.S. Government.
Related
Disclaimer: This information is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. Data is sourced from BEA, BLS, HUD, FBI, NCES, DOL, and EPA. Consult a qualified professional before making decisions based on this data.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.
All federal data sources used on this page
- U.S. Census Bureau ACS — multi-dimension demographic + housing + income aggregates for cross-area comparison. census.gov/programs-surveys/acs
- BEA Regional Economic Accounts — GDP, personal income, employment by state and metro. bea.gov/data/regional
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) — wage estimates for comparable-area indexing. bls.gov/oes
- FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) — crime statistics for safety-score component. fbi.gov/ucr
- NCES Common Core of Data — public-school quality indicators by area. nces.ed.gov/ccd
- EPA AirNow + Air Quality System (AQS) — air-quality measurements by area. epa.gov/outdoor-air-quality-data
- HUD Fair Market Rents (FMR) — county and metro housing-cost indicators. huduser.gov/datasets/fmr