County Distress Index
The County Distress Index (CDI) scores all 3,144 U.S. counties on a 0–100 scale across 5 equal-weighted domains: delinquency, default and legal, debt burden, labor, and safety net and buffer. A county's score is the share of U.S. counties it is more distressed than.
How the CDI is calculated · Download all counties (CSV)
Data: U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Urban Institute, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts
National Snapshot
3,144 counties scored across 5 domains.
County Distress Map
Holmes County, Mississippi, is the most distressed U.S. county
County Distress Index score for all 3,144 U.S. counties, from green (least distressed, 0–29) to red (most distressed, 80–100). Data from 2024 to Aug 2026.
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County Distress Index score · data from 2024 to Aug 2026
Point to or tap a county for its rank and score. Click it, or tap it twice, to open its page.
All Counties
| Rank | County | State | Score | Score Label |
|---|
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Select a state to see county-level distress data, rankings, and maps.
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Three counties, read up close.
How County Scores Work
Each county is scored 0–100 using 5 equal-weighted domains. Each domain averages its member indicators' county ranks, the domains are averaged, and that average is ranked against every other county. So a county's score is the share of U.S. counties it is more distressed than, and each score label below covers about a tenth of counties.
Questions about county distress scores
What data sources are used for county distress scores?
County scores draw on the Urban Institute's Debt in America (Equifax consumer credit panel: credit-card delinquency, the share of people with a car or retail loan who are behind on payments, debt in collections), FRED/Equifax (subprime credit share), the Census Bureau (poverty, child poverty, median household income, disability, health coverage, severe renter cost burden, adults 25 to 54 not working), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (unemployment averaged over the latest 12 months), HUD (fair market rents), and the U.S. Courts (bankruptcy filings). Each county is scored across 14 individual indicators grouped into 5 equal-weighted domains. Urban Institute data: Breno Braga, Signe-Mary McKernan, Samantha Atherton, and Kassandra Martinchek, "Debt in America," last updated November 20, 2025, https://datacatalog.urban.org/dataset/debt-america-2025. Licensed under ODC-By 1.0. The County Distress Index is American Default Research's own calculation; the Urban Institute does not produce or endorse it.
How often are county scores updated?
County inputs update on their source agencies’ publication schedules. Scores are rebuilt when the canonical source set changes; the methodology page identifies the current vintage for each input.
How do county scores differ from the national American Distress Index?
The national American Distress Index tracks household financial distress over time using quarterly time-series data. County scores are cross-sectional — they compare counties to each other at a point in time, so a county's score is the share of U.S. counties it is more distressed than. The national index tracks trends; county scores compare places.