There are more than few metro areas in today’s America that can be considered guilty of questionable behavioral patterns – as witnessed in WalletHub’s data report of 2023’s Most Sinful Cities in America.
To get a data handle on the slippery concept of sin, WalletHub studies 182 cities based on a confederation of sinful behaviors: anger and hatred (violent crime), jealousy (theft and fraud), excesses and vices (obesity, drug use and DUI fatalities), greed (casino gambling), lust (adult entertainment establishments per capita and high teen birth rates), vanity (tanning salons per capita and search engine inquiries for plastic surgery), and laziness (the share of adults not working and high school dropout rates).
And the most sinful city is…not really a surprise: Las Vegas topped the WalletHub list, followed by Houston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Atlanta. At the other end of the spectrum, Hawaii’s Pearl City was considered the least sinful, followed by California’s Fremont, Connecticut’s Bridgeport, Wisconsin’s Madison and Florida’s Port St. Lucie.
WalletHub also noted that among the 182 cities it studied, Irvine, California, has the lowest violent crime rate, 0.75, which is 32.3 times lower than in Memphis, Tennessee, the city with the highest violent crime rate (24.21). Aurora, Illinois, has the fewest thefts per 1,000 residents (2.40), which is 37.0 times fewer than in Tacoma, Washington the city with the most thefts per 1,000 residents (88.80).
San Francisco has the lowest share of obese adults, 19.10%, which is 2.5 times lower than in Akron, Ohio, the city with the highest at 48.50%. And Fremont has the lowest share of adult smokers, 7.9% which is 3.7 times lower than in Cleveland, the city with the highest, at 29.1%.
“Every city struggles with one flaw or another, from high bullying rates and frequent hate crimes to a prevalence of binge eating and excessive drinking among residents,” said Cassandra Happe, a WalletHub analyst. “While it is a personal choice to indulge in one vice or another, these choices can have a financial impact on others in the community, especially when more and more residents partake in these activities.”
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