Report Card
New study details which big cities in North Texas are most diverse
When it comes to ethnic diversity, Dallas lags behind a couple of its large suburbs. Among 501 big U.S. cities, Dallas ranks 47th overall and fourth in Texas, according to a recently released study by personal finance website WalletHub.
Earning higher spots on the list were Arlington at No. 38, and Plano at No. 46. Fort Worth came in at No. 62.
To come up its ranking, WalletHub measured three key indicators of ethnic diversity: language, ethnicity and race, and birthplace.
In the three categories studied, Dallas earned a rank of 43 in "ethnicity and race," 53 in language, and 251 in birthplace. In the same three categories, Arlington ranked 17, 76, and 169, respectively; Plano scored 78, 54, and 57, respectively.
Among Texas cities, Houston, a city that prides itself on its diversity, ranked 28th nationwide and No. 1 in Texas.
“Houston is the most diverse city in the United States. But diversity alone is not enough — we must always strive to be more inclusive,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner tweeted in December 2019.
Austin ranked 73rd overall in the Wallethub study. San Antonio came in at No. 136.
While Austin and cities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area don’t rank particularly high in the WalletHub study, they do show up on a recent list of the country’s most racially diverse metro areas.
DFW held the No. 11 spot in the Bloomberg news service’s 2018 ranking of racial diversity among the 100 largest U.S. metros, while Austin stood at No. 19. Houston bested both of those areas, though, landing at No. 5.
Dallas and Austin didn’t perform as well in a racial and ethnic index compiled byU.S. News & World Report.
The index shows the racial and ethnic diversity of Dallas actually slipped 3.4 percent from 2010 to 2018, with Austin’s diversity declining by 0.10 percent. The decrease was 2.6 percent in San Antonio and 1.2 percent in Houston, the index shows.
The diversity picture was brighter in other Texas cities included in the U.S. New & World Report index, which measured racial and ethnic diversity in U.S. cities with at least 300,000 residents. Arlington saw its racial and ethnic diversity rise 3.6 percent from 2010 to 2018, with Fort Worth at 1.8 percent.