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12 Worst U.S. Cities for Financial Stress

Michael S. Fischer By Michael S. Fischer

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Americans’ stress levels surged during the pandemic, and today they remain elevated because of record-high inflation and rising homicide rates, according to a new report from personal finance website WalletHub.

The report points to a recent survey from the American Psychological Association that found 83% of Americans feel stressed about inflation, and 75% about crime and violence.

WalletHub noted that certain kinds of stress, in the right doses, can have positive effects on a person’s well-being. But when stress becomes unmanageable, it turns chronic, potentially leading to damaging effects, such as health problems and loss of productivity. The report cites one estimate that workplace-related stress alone costs society up to $300 billion a year.

Inhabitants in some cities cope reasonably well with financial issues and other sources of stress, and others much worse. To determine where residents feel most and least stressed, WalletHub compared 182 U.S. cities — including the 150 most populated ones, plus at least two of the most populated cities in each state — across the key dimensions of work, financial, family, and health and safety stress.

For this list, we present the cities that scored highest on measures of financial stress. Factors in WalletHub’s analysis included:

  • Median Annual Household Income
  • Share of households behind on bills in past 12 months
  • Foreclosure rate
  • Personal bankruptcy rate
  • Median debt per median earnings
  • Median credit score
  • Poverty rate
  • Food insecurity
  • Housing affordability
  • Share of seriously underwater mortgages

Measures of stress in other categories included underemployment and unemployment rates, traffic congestion, child care costs, divorce and separation rates, share of insured population and physical activity rates.

Researchers evaluated the four dimensions using 39 relevant metrics, grading each one on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the highest levels of stress.

See the gallery for the 12 U.S. cities with the most financially stressed populations, according to WalletHub.