US Counties With the Lowest Material Security Scores

3,108 US counties ranked by material security score, from lowest to highest. First are East Carroll Parish, LA (-3.95), Holmes County, MS (-3.64) and Ziebach County, SD (-3.46). The middle one of the 3,108 has 0.252.

What this measures

Poverty, child poverty, income inequality, and four basic-needs measures from CDC PLACES: food, housing, utilities and transport. It is flipped so higher means less hardship, which is why it is named for security, not for what it counts. Source: .

A standard deviation is a typical gap between places.

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 lowest counties

Every state, lowest first

Each state’s own published figure, not an average of its counties.

More on material security score

• US Counties With the Highest Material Security Scores
• Material security score 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.