Of the more than 180 most populated cities in the United States, Baltimore City has nearly the highest rates of stress, according to a new report from personal finance website WalletHub.
The report also ranked Baltimore’s southeastern neighbor, Columbia, Md., as one of the least stressed cities in the country.
WalletHub compiled 182 of the most populated cities in the United States, which they examined based on four categories of stress: work, finance, family, and health and safety. Those categories were broken down further into 41 subcategories.
Subcategories ranged from unemployment rate and average commute time for work stress; food insecurity and housing affordability for financial stress; separation and divorce rate and child care cost for family stress; and COVID-19 cases and deaths and hate-crime incidents per capita for health and safety stress, among other factors.
Cities could earn up to 25 points in each of the four categories, with the point apportionment varying among subcategories.
Cities that ranked closer to 1st place had higher stress, while cities that ranked closer to 182nd place had lower stress.
WalletHub found that Baltimore is the fourth most-stressed city in the country.
Baltimore ranked sixth highest for work stress, and seventh for family stress. The city also ranked 19th for financial stress and 80th for health and safety stress.
Cleveland, Ohio in first place topped the list of most stressed U.S. cities, followed by Detroit in second and New Orleans in third.
The only other Maryland city on the list, Columbia in Howard County ranked 178th as one of the least-stressed cities in the country.
Columbia ranked 40th for work stress, 160th for family stress, 178th for financial stress, and 181st for health and safety stress.
Ranking even less stressed than Columbia are Nashua, N.H. in 179th place; Madison, Wis. in 180th; Fremont, Calif. in 181st; and South Burlington, Vt. in 182th — the least stressed city in the country.
In the work-related stress category, Newark, N.J. ranked highest, while Reno, Nev. ranked lowest.
Cleveland ranked highest for both financial stress and family stress.
South Burlington ranked lowest for family stress. Meanwhile, Fremont, Calif. ranked lowest for financial stress, and health and safety stress.
Mobile, Ala. has the highest rate of stress related to health and safety.
People can read a full list of cities’ stress rankings on WalletHub’s website.
