Top 10 States for Bankruptcy

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Top 10 States for Bankruptcy

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Nick Denton recently filed for bankruptcy as a suit against Gawker, the famous publication company he owned, was swamped by a lawsuit won by Hulk Hogan. The bankruptcy levels vary widely state to state, as research shows.

Dictionary.com defines bankruptcy as:

… a person who upon his or her own petition or that of his or her creditors is adjudged insolvent by a court and whose property is administered for and divided among his or her creditors under a bankruptcy law.

The level per 100,000 people varied widely by state, based on data from U.S. counts as recorded by Statista for the 12-month period that ended June 2015. The national rate for the period was 274 per 100,000.

The list of the top 10:

  1. Tennessee, 565
  2. Alabama, 518
  3. Georgia, 501
  4. Illinois, 457
  5. Utah, 433
  6. Indiana, 423
  7. District of Columbia, 405
  8. Mississippi, 364
  9. Kentucky, 357
  10. Alaska and Nevada (tie), 351

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The states with the lowest rates:

  1. Arkansas, 57
  2. Delaware, 81
  3. North Dakota, 81
  4. Vermont, 105
  5. Hawaii, 116
  6. Texas, 126
  7. Montana, 131
  8. South Dakota, 135
  9. Massachusetts, 141
  10. South Carolina, 145

The levels appear to be highest in southern states, where people tend to have low median income.

Methodology: These lists show the personal bankruptcy rate (per 100,000 inhabitants) in the United States in 2015 by state. Data is for 12 months through June 30, 2015. The national rate does not include bankruptcies or population in U.S. territories. Data includes all non-business bankruptcies, and the rate was calculated using U.S. Census Bureau population data.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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