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Study Ranks San Antonio Among the 10 Most Financially Stressed U.S. Cities

By Sanford Nowlin

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Janece Johnson, who lives at Alazan-Apache Courts, receives a box of donated food in June. - ANDREA MORENO / SAN ANTONIO HERON

Andrea Moreno / San Antonio Heron
Janece Johnson, who lives at Alazan-Apache Courts, receives a box of donated food in June.

Nine in 10 Americans say COVID-19 has put stress on their personal finances, according to the National Endowment for Financial Education. But that figure is likely far worse in San Antonio, according to a new study from the personal finance site Smart Asset.

The Alamo City ranked 9th on the company's list of U.S. cities experiencing the most financial stress. Four other Texas metros — Houston, El Paso, Corpus Christi and Laredo — also landed in the top 10.

To get their rankings, researchers compared the 99 largest U.S. cities across metrics including unemployment rate, percentage of the population living below the poverty line and recent food and housing insecurity.

If you're familiar with our city's history of general poverty and economic segregation, it should come as little surprise we landed so high on the list.

SA ranks 22nd-highest for the percentage of its population below the poverty line — one in five residents — according to Smart Asset's number crunching. What's more, 8% of households here are severely housing cost-burdened, meaning those costs eat up more than half of their monthly income.

Compounding the woes, San Antonio had the 10th-worst four-year change in median household income of the 99 surveyed cities. That figure increased by just 8.13% from 2014 to 2018.

Here's how we stacked up against other cities:

Smart Asset

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Tags: San Antonio, Economy, Stress, poverty, food insecurity, housing insecurity, income growth, job losses, unemployment, generational poverty, covid-19, covid 19, pandemic, coronavirus corona virus, smart asset, Census, Houston, El Paso, Corpus Christi, Laredo, texas, personal finances

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