In the largest U.S. cities, at least half of all households have seen a serious financial loss such as lost job, wages or savings. Many problems are concentrated in Black and Latino households.
In New York City, where hospitals and intensive care units were massively overcrowded for weeks this spring, 19% of people say at least one member of their household has been unable to get medical care for a serious problem when they needed it during the pandemic.
And more than half of those households say they suffered negative health consequences because of the lack of care. And among the 9% of households in the city who say they were unable to get timely surgeries or procedures done for important health problems during the epidemic, 56% report negative consequences. Additionally, those who report having someone in the household working in the health care field express serious concern about their safety on the job. In all four cities, majorities of households with health care workers express serious concerns about their safety in regards to the coronavirus at work, including more than three-quarters of those in Los Angeles . This comes as sizable shares of households are living with people who are at high risk for developing serious illness from the coronavirus because of their age or underlying medical conditions. In Los Angeles, it's nearly half .46% of people report serious problems with finances in their household during the pandemic. The poll was also able to capture snapshots from those four biggest cities at different stages of the months-long coronavirus pandemic — cities that have had a range of public health responses to the virus. For example, in Houston, where the epidemic peaked in July, about 4 in 10 households report using up most or all of their savings. Another 19% say they didn't have any savings to begin with. That means about 60% of Houstonians were either flat-out broke by early August or nearly so.We also found a bigger impact on employment than other surveys have indicated. Some 57% of Houston households report that someone in their household lost a job, lost a business, has been furloughed or has had wages or hours reduced since the start of the coronavirus outbreak. These households report serious financial problems in even greater numbers.A similar picture emerges in Los Angeles, where a surge in coronavirus cases was also peaking in July. There, more than half of Black households report serious financial problems , compared with 37% of whites. And in LA, 71% of Latinos — almost twice the percentage of whites — report serious financial problems. In Los Angeles, more than 1 in 3 households report serious problems with paying credit cards, loans or other debt , while the same percentage report having depleted all or most of their savings. One in 10 say they didn't have any savings at the start of the outbreak. Half of New York City households say they suffered job or wage loss, and among these households, 73% say they are having serious financial problems. Nearly half of those with employment changes say they've used up all or most of their savings, with 8% more saying they didn't have any savings at the start of the outbreak.Notably, 1 in 5 households in New York City reports having missed or delayed paying major bills to ensure everyone had enough to eat. Latino and Black households were far more likely to report serious problems affording food than white households . Some 16% of Latinos said members of their household had serious problems not getting enough to eat every day.When our poll was being conducted in July and early August, Chicago had escaped, somewhat, the intense surges of coronavirus cases of the other three cities in our survey. But later in August, that changed and the city is now on track for a peak in September of several hundred new cases per day. The city, along with nearby suburbs, is considering implementing tighter restrictions again to prevent the surge from getting out of control. Even though Chicago has been less affected than the rest of the country, the city's economy suffered, as did the whole country, from virus-related shutdowns and restrictions this past spring and into summer.Our poll captured Chicago on the brink of the coming surge. As we saw nationally and in the other cities, about half of Chicago households report losing jobs or wages since the start of the coronavirus outbreak. More than two-thirds of those with job or wage losses say they are having serious financial problems, including an impact on savings as well as on the household's ability to pay bills, including mortgage or rent.The survey was conducted online and via cellphone and landline calls among a nationally representative, probability-based, address-based sample of 3,454 adults ages 18 or older — both nationally and with an additional focus on the four largest U.S. cities: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston. The margin of error for the national survey is 3.3 percentage points .
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