US Counties With the Highest Social Vulnerability to Disasters

3,144 US counties ranked by social vulnerability to disasters, from highest to lowest. First are Kusilvak Census Area, AK (100), Bethel Census Area, AK (100) and Nome Census Area, AK (99.9). The middle one of the 3,144 has 50.

What this measures

How hard a disaster is likely to hit the people who live here. Counties are ranked from 0 (least) to 100 (most). The rank is built from ten facts about homes in the Census Bureau's survey: low income, disability, no health insurance, age 65 or older, no car, no internet, crowded homes, no one with a job, trouble with English, and one or no adult to care for others. So it mostly repeats other survey measures on this site. It is not new proof about them. It says nothing about which hazards a place faces. Source: FEMA National Risk Index (Census and University of South Carolina indexes).

For most measures, a national ranking mostly sorts places by income and by how urban they are. Each county’s own page compares it with the 50 counties most like it instead, which is often the fairer view.

The 100 highest counties

More on social vulnerability to disasters

• US Counties With the Lowest Social Vulnerability to Disasters
• Social vulnerability to disasters by US county: map by year and what it goes with

A ranking describes places, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All US rankings.