Arizona County Distress Index
Financial distress scores for all 15 counties in Arizona, scored 0–100 across five domains. A county's score is the share of U.S. counties it is more distressed than; the average Arizona county scores 70.3. 9 counties score high, very high, or extreme.
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 | Scores as of Aug 2026
Arizona Snapshot
Arizona County Map
Apache County is the most distressed of Arizona's 15 counties
County Distress Index score for Arizona's 15 counties, from green (least distressed, 0–29) to red (most distressed, 80–100). Data from 2024 to Aug 2026.
Loading the county map…
The county map could not be loaded. Every county is in the lists on this page.
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.
Most & Least Distressed
Most Distressed
Least Distressed
Score Distribution
How Arizona's 15 county scores are distributed across the 0–100 scale.
All Arizona Counties
15 counties ranked by distress score. Click column headers to sort.
| State Rank | Nat'l Rank | County | Score | Score Label | Primary Driver |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | — | Apache County | 90 | extreme county distress | Labor |
| 2 | — | Navajo County | 89 | very high county distress | Labor |
| 3 | — | Santa Cruz County | 88 | very high county distress | Labor |
| 4 | — | Mohave County | 83 | very high county distress | Labor |
| 5 | — | Gila County | 80 | very high county distress | Safety Net & Buffer |
| 6 | — | La Paz County | 76 | high county distress | Safety Net & Buffer |
| 7 | — | Yuma County | 71 | high county distress | Labor |
| 8 | — | Cochise County | 71 | high county distress | Labor |
| 9 | — | Pinal County | 70 | high county distress | Default & Legal |
| 10 | — | Pima County | 69 | moderate-high county distress | Debt Burden (housing basis) |
| 11 | — | Coconino County | 66 | moderate-high county distress | Debt Burden (housing basis) |
| 12 | — | Graham County | 60 | moderate-high county distress | Labor |
| 13 | — | Maricopa County | 56 | moderate county distress | Debt Burden (housing basis) |
| 14 | — | Yavapai County | 51 | moderate county distress | Debt Burden (housing basis) |
| 15 | — | Greenlee County | 28 | low county distress | Delinquency |
How County Scores Work
Each county is scored 0–100 using five equal-weighted domains. Each domain averages its member indicators' county ranks, the domains are averaged, and that average is ranked against every U.S. county. So a county's score is the share of U.S. counties it is more distressed than. National ranks are shown only for the 100 most and 100 least distressed counties, because ranks in between move between updates. Counties with identical composite scores share a rank, marked T- for tied.
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.