Detroit couldn’t care less, at least according to one recent study.
A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub compared the 100 largest U.S. cities to measure their “spirit of compassion.” Perhaps not surprising, Detroit ranked among the lowest — clocking in at No. 94.
Wallethub compared the cities across three key dimensions. Detroit scored 72 in “caring for the community,” 98 in “caring for the vulnerable,” and 79 in “caring for the workforce.”
The authors used data including share of sheltered homeless people, number of volunteering hours per capita, and share of income donated to charity. They then evaluated those dimensions using 39 relevant metrics, grading each on a 100-point scale, with 100 representing the highest level of caring. Finally, they determined each city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order the sample.
Detroit ranked No. 1, however, when it came to having the highest percentage of workers who carpool — although our region’s notoriously bad public transportation is certainly a factor here.
Of course, the real conversation to be had is about what decades of austerity does to the soul of a city.
You can read more here.
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This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2019.
