The 10 Poorest States in the U.S.

Published on July 24, 2013 at 6:48 pm by Alexandr Oleinic in Lists

Curious what the poorest states in the U.S. are? They say “the higher you climb the harder you fall.” While speaking about countries, we can relate this saying to the idea that the better the financial situation is in a country, the worse it gets after an economic recession. As an example we can look at the United States of America, which got hit pretty hard by the recent financial crisis. And even though the economy seems to be recovering, there is still a lot of ground left to cover.

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America was always been considered a land of opportunity. People, especially from poorer countries, are thinking every day about leaving their homes in the pursuit of happiness in the U.S.. While America is still the country with the largest number of people who have over seven-digits sums in their accounts, in comparison with those who are struggling everyday to make ends meet, this number is extremely small.

A recent report by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) shows us that almost half of the American families (over 130 million people) don’t have enough finances saved to survive for three months in case of some income-related troubles (like unemployment). CFED attributes the term of “liquid asset poor” to this category of households. Among these people are included over 42 million of those whose income stays below the official poverty line, which is $23,050 for a family of four members. Another category of households, invoked by CFED in its “Assets & Opportunities Scorecard,” is “net worth asset poor,” which includes families whose high debt surpasses the value of their belongings (house, cars, savings).

The “Assets & Opportunities Scorecard” analyzes all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia and evaluates over 100 measures in order to provide an outlook on the financial security of people living in the U.S.

Aside from the aforementioned measures, the report indicates that Americans are not doing so well on many other benchmarks. While homeownership and ownership of small businesses is experiencing a downfall, the increasing volume of debt taken to support families’ budgets together with a high percentage of foreclosures are ruling the day.

To sum up, America is not doing great, and if we take it state by state, we can see a more disastrous situation in some states than in the others. The low income and high amounts of debt, aside from making households incapable of purchasing some assets, affects other aspects of their lives like healthcare or education.

Let’s take a look at the 10 poorest states in the U.S. on the following pages, in a style similar to our list of the worst job markets in the world: