The seven deadly sins (a.k.a. the capital vices or cardinal sins), according to Christian teachings, are pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. Of course, not everyone is Christian and the world has changed a lot since the time the Bible was written. So you could say that in the 21st century, the seven deadly sins could now include anger and hatred, jealousy, excesses and vices, greed, lust, vanity and laziness.
WalletHub, a persona finance website, decided to see which U.S. cities were the most sinful, using those more “modern day” parameters. Using data they sourced from organizations such as the U.S. Census Bureau, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Eventbrite, Google and Tinder (YOWSA, that’s a helluva grouping!), WalletHub compared and ranked 182 U.S. cities based on those seven sins. Using those 7 categories, they then weighted 38 relevant metrics such as teen birth rate, share of obese adults, bullying rate, excessive drinking, debt-to-income ratio, adult entertainment establishments per capita, volunteer rate, average daily time spent watching TV and Google search interest for “Top 5 Plastic Surgeries” to help them figure out a city’s overall score for sin.
These are their main findings:
If you can’t tell from their photo, the most sinful city is, not surprisingly, “Sin City” itself, Las Vegas, NV. It got a Vice Index of 59.93
Second place went to St. Louis, MO, with a score of 55.14
Third place went to Philadelphia, PA, with a vice index of 54.11
Here are the Top 10:
1. Las Vegas, NV
2. St. Louis, MO
3. Philadelphia, PA
4. Houston, TX
5. Atlanta, GA
6. Los Angeles, CA
7. Denver, CO
8. Chicago, IL
9. Baton Rouge, LA
10. Phoenix, AZ
Oh, and the 10 LEAST sinful cities in the U.S.?
182. Port St. Lucie, FL
181. Bridgeport, CT
180. Fremont, Ca
179. West Valley City, UT
178. Cape Coral, FL
177. Pearl City, HI
176. Laredo, TX
175. Burlington, VT
174. Columbia, MD
173. South Burlington, VT
Wallet Hub also included the cities where you would find the most and fewest:
- Violent Crimes per capita
- Thefts per capita
- Excessive drinking
- Charitable donations (as % of income)
- Adult entertainment establishments per capita
- Tanning salons per capita
- Percent of adults who don’t exercise
Check out this page of WalletHub’s website to see the full results of their study.
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