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 personal 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, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service, Advameg, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Federal Trade Commission, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, County Health Rankings, TransUnion, Yelp, National Council on Problem Gambling, Corporation for National and Community Service, Esri’s Updated Demographics (2023 estimates), The Southern Poverty Law Center, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Wm. Robert Johnston, Gun Violence Archive, Google Ads and Tinder, (YOWSA, that’s a helluva grouping!), WalletHub compared and ranked 182 U.S. cities based on those seven modern sins mentioned above. 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 60.82
Second place went to Houston, TX, with a score of 54.43
Third place went to Los Angeles, CA, with a vice index of 53.79
Here are the Top 10:
1. Las Vegas, NV
2. Houston, TX
3. Los Angeles, CA
4. Atlanta, GA
5. Philadelphia, PA
6. Denver, CO
7. Phoenix, AZ
8. Miami, FL
9. Dallas, TX
10. St. Louis, MO
Oh, and the 10 LEAST sinful cities in the U.S.?
182. Columbia, MD
181. Fremont, CA
180. Port St. Lucie, FL
179. Pearl City, HI
178. Madison, WI
177. Cape Coral, FL
176. West Valley City, UT
175. Bridgeport, CT
174. South Burlington, VT
173. Fort Wayne, IN
WalletHub also included the cities where you would find the most and fewest:
- Violent Crimes per capita
- Thefts per capita
Check out this page of WalletHub’s website to see the full results of their study.
Want to comment on this post? Great! Read this first to help ensure it gets approved.
Want to sponsor a post, write something for Your Mileage May Vary, or put ads on our site? Click here for more info.
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and sign up to get emailed notifications of when we post.
Whether you’ve read our articles before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
