Households in 4 major cities report ‘serious financial problems’
At least half of households in the four largest U.S. cities — New York City (53 percent), Los Angeles (56 percent), Chicago (50 percent), and Houston (63 percent) — report facing serious financial problems during the coronavirus outbreak. The issues are reported across a wide range of areas during this time, including depleting household savings, serious problems paying credit card bills and other debt, and affording medical care, according to a new NPR/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health poll. Many of these problems are concentrated among Black and Latino households, households with annual incomes below $100,000, and households experiencing job or wage losses since the start of the outbreak. Serious financial problems during the coronavirus outbreak are reported by majorities of Black households in New York City (62 percent), Los Angeles (52 percent), Chicago (69 percent) and Houston (81 percent). Serious financial problems are also reported by...