Most financially stressed US states

The USInsights Financial Stress Index (FSI) is a composite score that combines three measures of household financial pressure at the county level: renter cost burden (share of renters spending 30%+ on housing — ACS 2024), eviction filing rate (Princeton Eviction Lab, data through 2018), and debt in collections rate (Urban Institute Debt in America, 2024). Scores run from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more acute financial stress.

These state rankings show the average FSI across all counties within each state that has full reporting. The national median state FSI (across reliable-coverage states) is 53.2. Delaware has the highest average county FSI at 75, driven by a combination of elevated rent burden, high eviction filing rates, and widespread debt collection activity. The main table covers 37 states; 12 states with thin eviction-data coverage are listed separately below.

These states are missing eviction data for most of their counties. No state-level FSI is shown — averaging across three or four reporting counties would not represent the state. The individual state pages show the counties that do have FSI scores along with a coverage banner explaining the gap.

The geography of financial stress in the United States follows a clear pattern: Southern and rural states dominate the top of the rankings. States across the Deep South — Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, and West Virginia — average an FSI of 59.6, well above the national median of 53.2. These states share overlapping vulnerabilities: persistent poverty, low median wages, high uninsured rates, and housing markets where incomes have not kept pace with rents.

The least financially stressed states — Nebraska, Idaho, Utah, Montana, Wyoming — tend to be states with higher median household incomes, lower poverty rates, and stronger tenant protections. FSI scores in these states reflect lower rent burden and significantly lower rates of debt in collections relative to the national average.

State averages can obscure sharp within-state variation. Even lower-stress states contain counties with elevated FSI scores, typically in rural areas, post-industrial cities, or regions with high concentrations of low-wage service employment. Explore the county-level map to see the full distribution.

The FSI is a composite of three equally weighted components, each percentile-ranked across all US counties:

• Renter cost burden — share of renters paying 30%+ of income on housing (ACS 5-Year, 2024). Higher burden → higher FSI contribution.
• Eviction filing rate — eviction filings per 100 renter households (Princeton Eviction Lab, data through 2018 — most recent county-level national release). Higher filing rate → higher FSI contribution.
• Debt in collections rate — share of adults with at least one account in debt collection (Urban Institute Debt in America, 2024). Higher rate → higher FSI contribution.

Each component is independently percentile-ranked (0–100) and the three ranks are averaged to produce the final FSI score. The FSI is a relative measure — it ranks counties against each other, not against an absolute threshold. A county with FSI 80 is in the top quintile of financial stress nationally, not 80% stressed in an absolute sense.

State scores shown here are simple averages of county-level FSI scores within each state, giving equal weight to each county regardless of population. This approach emphasises geographic spread of financial stress rather than population-weighted aggregate exposure.

Coverage caveat. The FSI requires all three inputs per county. The eviction component (Princeton Eviction Lab) is sourced from state court records, and many states have not digitised eviction filings in a way the Lab can ingest. 12 states have FSI coverage under 60% — they're listed separately above rather than ranked alongside states with full coverage. The main ranking is limited to states where the state average reflects most of the state, not a court-digitisation subset.