We used science and data to determine which cities in America are the real pits.

Editor’s Note: We updated this article for 2020. This is our sixth time ranking the worst places to live in America. This article is an opinion based on facts and is meant as infotainment — don’t freak out.

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Today, we’re going to talk about the worst places to live in the entire country. We might hurt some feelings along the way, and some people will agree with each city. Either way, we did the research, so we know we’re pretty darn close.

How did we determine the worst places to live in America anyways? Most people would agree with us that bad places to live have a lot of crime, crummy schools, not a lot of culture, and crappy jobs. Basically, we’re talking about the cities where you want to avoid if you’re looking for a fresh start in life. And if you live in the places we’re about to talk about, well, then, you are clearly not going to move away if you haven’t left by now. So, good for you!

The cities below all share those qualities. There might be some surprises on this list, but when you look at the unbiased data, it’s hard to argue against. We had more than 10 million people read our worst cities in a state series, which was featured in hundreds of media outlets, including an NPR feature.

So we know what we’re talking about.

After analyzing the biggest cities in the country, here is our list of the worst cities to live in America.

You might be surprised to see some of these cities on this list. We understand there’s a lot of good in every place. However, according to data (which doesn’t measure things like beauty, ‘friendly people’, and community involvement), there are far better options in America for making a place home.

What’s the worst place to live in America for 2020? The worst place to live in America is Birmingham, AL based on the most recent crime and census data around quality of life.

The best place to live in America? Naperville, IL. More on that later.

Now, I’d like to add that we’d like to also help these cities too. So, in the description, there’s links to places in each city where you can do your part if you want, to make things better. So, while we’re poking a little fun at some of these places, we want to do our part to help, too.

That said, try not to get too depressed as we begin our journey of America’s worst cities.

For more reading about America, check out:

How do you decide if a place is lousy or not? In order to rank the worst places to live in America, we had to determine what criteria people like or dislike about a place. It isn’t a stretch to assume that people like low crime, solid education, things to do and a stable economy. So we scraped the internet for those criteria, asked for the opposite of those, and it spit out the answer. Like magic. How we crunched the numbers for 2020 We threw a lot of criteria at this one in order to get the best, most complete results possible. Using FBI crime data and the most recent 2014-2018 American Community Survey data, this is the criteria we used: Population Density (The lower the worse — meaning there’s less to do for indoor entertainment)

Highest Unemployment Rates

Adjusted Median Income (Median income adjusted for the cost of living)

Low home prices

A lot of uninsured individuals

A high portion of uneducated adults

High Crime

High Poverty If you’d like to see the complete list of cities, scroll to the bottom of this post to see a link to the entire data set. Or you can download the data here. Note: We get the crime numbers from the FBI, which gets its crime numbers from the cities themselves.

There You Have It — The Worst Big Cities in America If you’re looking at cities in the U.S. where crime is high, people are broke, and the public schools are lousy, this is an accurate list. Now, do these cities have any redeeming qualities? Sure. We were being a little hard on most of them while trying to make our point, but there’s some culture in most of these places. Like anywhere in America, there’s good and bad around every corner. But overall, based on statistical data, and from what many top news gathering agencies have written in the past, these are your worst potential places you could live in the US. If you live in Memphis, or any of the other cities we talked about, hopefully you’re working to make your city a better place. If not, you have nothing to complain about yourself.

In case you’re wondering which cities ALMOST made the list: St. Louis and Springfield Missouri as well as Hartford Connecticut are also terrible places to live. Here are the best cities in America, according to science Naperville Sunnyvale Torrance For more reading, check out: Safest Cities In America



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Worst Places To Live In America



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