By Chidinma C. Williams

Ph.D. Candidate in Computational Mathematics | Geospatial Researcher | Graduate Statistician

A shorter version of this article is available on LinkedIn.

Some states don't just have high credit card balances. They have high balances and low incomes and rising delinquencies and surging bankruptcies. That combination is a trap. This map shows where it's tightest. The pressure is concentrated in the South.

Figure 1: Average Credit Card Balance by State (2024)

Choropleth shaded by raw average balance. Teal dots scale to fraud reports per 1,000 residents. Red-outlined states exceed the 80th percentile delinquency threshold (≥10.4%).

Most coverage of America’s credit card crisis stops at the headline number: the average balance. Alaska tops the list at $8,026. Mississippi sits near the bottom at $5,134. But that number alone hides a crucial difference — because a $6,000 balance means something very different to a household earning $110,000 a year than it does to one earning $56,000.

To tell a more complete story, this map introduces a Household Credit Distress Index (HCDI), a composite measure built from three variables that capture both the size of the debt burden and the strain of carrying it.

How the Index Works

The index combines three state-level indicators, each normalized to a 0–1 scale before weighting:

• Debt Burden (45%): average credit card balance divided by median household income. This transforms raw balance figures into a measure of relative weight: how many weeks of typical earnings does that balance represent?

• Delinquency Rate (35%): the share of credit card accounts 90+ days past due. This captures individuals already losing the fight.

• Bankruptcy Filing Rate (20%): personal bankruptcies per 100,000 residents (FY2024). This is where people arrive at rock bottom.

The result is a single composite score per state, mapped from low stress to high stress. It draws on methodological precedents from the CFPB Financial Well-Being Scale and regional financial stress indices published by the Federal Reserve Banks of New York and Kansas City, with weights designed specifically to reflect the compounding burden of debt, delinquency, and bankruptcy at the household level.

HCDI = 45% debt burden + 35% delinquency rate + 20% bankruptcy rate

Each component normalized to a 0–1 scale before weighting. 

Equation 1: Household Credit Distress Index (HCDI)

Figure 2: Household Credit Distress Index by State (2024)

Composite index combining debt burden relative to median income (45%), delinquency rate (35%), and bankruptcy filings per 100,000 residents (20%). Each component normalized 0–1 before weighting. Amber-ringed states fall in the top quartile of bankruptcy filing rates. Dark dots scale to fraud reports per 1,000 residents. 

The pattern is stark and geographic. The Deep South (especially Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee) clusters at the darkest end of the spectrum. These states combine modest incomes with delinquency rates above 10% and the highest bankruptcy filing rates in the country. Nevada bleeds red from a different angle: high fraud exposure (20.4 reports per 1,000 residents) layered onto a debt burden that ranks among the heaviest in the West.

The amber boundaries, marking states in the top quartile of personal bankruptcy filings, concentrate in the South and parts of the Midwest. These are not states where people are simply spending too much. These are places where balances grow faster than income, minimum payments outpace wages, and debt spirals down to a courthouse filing. When delinquency and bankruptcy cluster in the same geography as a high debt burden, that is not a coincidence. That is a system under sustained structural pressure.

Meanwhile, dark ink dots scaled to fraud exposure reveal a second crisis layered onto the first: Florida (24.8 reports per 1,000), Georgia (23.4), and Washington D.C. (22.4) lead the nation in credit card fraud, and many of the same states sit deep in the red on the stress index. Financial vulnerability and financial predation tend to occupy the same geography.

All inputs are publicly available. Credit card balance figures come from Experian's state-level data as reported by CNBC. Delinquency rates and fraud statistics are drawn from WalletHub's annual state credit card analysis. Median household income figures are from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (2024), accessed via FRED. Bankruptcy filing rates are sourced from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts for fiscal year 2024. State geometries use the Census Bureau's 2024 TIGER/Line cartographic boundary files at a 1:20 million scale.

The weights used to build the index are my own. Other reasonable alternatives would shift the exact values, but not the central story: financial stress is concentrated in the South, Nevada, and select mid-Atlantic states.

Credit card debt in America crossed $1.17 trillion in 2024. That number is reported often. What gets reported less is where that debt is most likely to break people, where the balance is large relative to what someone earns, where the payments are already slipping, and where the courts are already full of bankruptcy petitions. This map is an attempt to show that geography. The debt trap is not evenly distributed. It has coordinates.

• Credit card balances: Experian State of Credit Report, via CNBC (2024)

• Delinquency rates & fraud statistics: WalletHub State Credit Card Debt Study (2024)

• Median household income: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024, via FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)

• Bankruptcy filing rates: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC), FY2024

• State geometries: U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line Cartographic Boundary Files, 2024 (1:20m scale)

This article is part of M.A.P.S.

Mapped Analysis & Pattern Spaces (M.A.P.S.) is a collection of geospatial projects exploring pattern, place, and visual analysis. Through cartography, spatial data, and design, these maps examine how social, economic, and geographic structures take shape across space.

© 2026 Chidinma C. Williams / M.A.P.S. All rights reserved.