Nevada households fare poorly in financial study

Nevada households earned poor marks in everything from subprime credit scores to financial assets in a nationwide study released Thursday.

The 2015 Assets and Opportunity Scorecard, compiled by the Corporation for Enterprise Development, ranked Nevada 50th among states and the District of Columbia for consumers with subprime credit scores.

It ranked the state 32nd for the percentage of unbanked households and 44th for the number of households that are “underbanked” — they have a bank account but used alternative financial services such as payday loans in the past year.

The Corporation for Enterprise Development is a Washington nonprofit organization.

Study authors says unbanked and under­banked households are more likely to tap high-cost predatory loans, which trap them in debt and further affect their ability to save and build assets.

The Scorecard findings are supported by another recent study, its authors say, conducted by the Green Zone Foundation and the School of Environmental and Public Affairs at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which shows payday lenders target Nevada’s military families and veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

“Payday lenders target these families by turning short-term loans into long-term debt traps that put our service members, veterans and their families into financial crises,” Cyndy Ortiz-Gustafson, policy chairwoman of the Opportunity Alliance, said in the study.

The study evaluates how residents are faring across 67 outcome measures in five issue areas — financial assets and income; businesses and jobs; housing and home ownership; health care; and education.

The authors wrote that although Nevada’s overall outcome ranking improved slightly from 50th last year to 48th this year, the state fared poorly in all five issue areas. The state receives an “F” in the businesses and jobs measure, a reflection of low marks for small-business ownership, private loans to small business, unemployment and retirement plan participation. Nevada was also ranked 51st in underemployment.

Nevada receives a “D” in the other four issue areas, the study noted. The state ranks 38th for financial assets and income, driven primarily by poor outcomes related to access to the financial mainstream described above. Also, high rates of uninsured residents are responsible for the state’s 43rd-place ranking in health care, and low home ownership rates and high foreclosure rates contributed to the state’s rank of 46th in housing and home ownership.

Poor education outcomes across the board, including low participation in early-childhood education and low high school graduation rates and college degree attainment, put Nevada in 45th place in education.

“The statistics identified by the Scorecard demonstrate the incredible opportunity Nevada has to improve its policies, which, in turn, can make a dramatic difference in the financial lives of Nevadans,” said Michele Johnson, president of the nonprofit Financial Guidance Center, the lead organization for the Nevada Asset Building Coalition, said in the statement.

The Scorecard also evaluates 68 different policy measures. Nevada ranks 38th overall in terms of policies, underscoring the link between inadequate policies and ongoing challenges confronting the state’s low- and moderate-income families. Nevada ranked near the bottom (49th) in the financial assets and income issue area.

The Silver State, however, performed better in housing and homeownership (24th) and businesses and jobs (17th).

One bright spot was health care policies. Nevada ranked sixth there, the study said, in part because of Medicaid expansion and policies that limit hospital charges, billing and collections.