We used data and science to determine which Tar Heel State cities are the real pits.

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

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If you're from North Carolina, you know how great you have it there. It's not quite the deep south, a little bit of east coast, and a lot of awesome. If you just moved here, join the party! You now realize that the Tar Heel State is one of America's finest states.

You have the mountains, the ocean, and some of the best college basketball teams in the nation. What else could you want? Oh yeah, great barbecue. South Carolina can't hold a candle to it.

But is it all cheery in North Carolina? Of course not. Just like every other state, North Carolina has its issues. There are some places that are having a hard time right now. The purpose of this post is to use science and data to determine which North Carolina cities need a little tender loving care.

After analyzing 130 of the Tar Heel State's most populous cities, we came up with this list as the 10 worst places to live in the state:

The 10 Worst Places To Live In North Carolina For 2020 Roxboro Wadesboro Selma Reidsville Lexington Albemarle Dunn Henderson Monroe Kinston

What? Where are these places you wonder? And before you get all riled up and say we're picking on small town America, that's not the case.

We understand there's a lot of good in every place.

However, according to data (which doesn't measure things like beauty and 'friendly people'), there are far better options in the state for making a place home. And the worst place to live in North Carolina? That would be Roxboro.

Read on below to see how we crunched the numbers and see how your city fared in 2020.

If you're looking for something more national, check out the worst cities in America or the worst states in America.

For more North Carolina reading, check out:

Next 10 Cities

How we determined the worst places to live in North Carolina for 2020

To figure out how bad a place is to live in, we only needed to know what kinds of things people like and then decide what cities have the least amount of those things.

We don't think it's a stretch to assume that people like the following things:

Good education

Lots of jobs

Low crime

Low poverty

Nice homes

High incomes

High population density (Lots of things to do)

Short work commutes

Health insurance

The data comes from the Census's most recent American Community Survey and from the FBI Uniform Crime Report.

We broke crime down into violent crime and property crime to give violent crime a larger weight -- if you did a simple calculation of all crimes per capita, property crimes are normally 7x more common and really bias that ranking.

Furthermore, only cities with at least 5,000 people were considered -- leaving 130 cities.

We then ranked each city from 1 to 130 for all the criteria with a #1 ranking being the worst for the particular criteria.

Next, we averaged the rankings into one "Worst Place To Live Score".

Finally, we ranked every city on the "Worst Place To Live Score" with the lowest score being the worst city in North Carolina -- Roxboro. Read on for a detailed look at the 10 worst cities in North Carolina. You can download the data here.

This list is a scientific analysis based on real data and is completely unbiased.

Wrapping Up The Worst In North Carolina

If you're looking at areas in North Carolina with the worst economic situations, where there's higher than average crime, and not a lot to do, this is an accurate list.

And in the end, Roxboro ranks as the worst city to live in North Carolina for 2020.

If you're curious enough, here are the best cities to live in North Carolina:

Apex (Pop. 48,254) Davidson (Pop. 12,666) Cary (Pop. 163,266)

For more North Carolina reading, check out:

Where Are The Worst Places To Live In North Carolina? Rank City Population Unemployment Rate Home Value 1 Roxboro 8,283 14.1% $84,200 2 Wadesboro 5,351 18.0% $97,900 3 Selma 6,577 7.3% $89,500 4 Reidsville 13,909 7.8% $100,000 5 Lexington 18,897 13.8% $106,000 6 Albemarle 15,889 8.7% $116,900 7 Dunn 9,635 9.5% $119,400 8 Henderson 14,986 10.2% $98,200 9 Monroe 34,679 9.2% $152,200 10 Kinston 20,659 15.5% $102,700

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