Help in a Long-Term Emergency

About two in five area adults (39 percent) say they have more than five people beyond their immediate family they can turn to for help in the event of a long-term emergency, like the death of a loved one. This is down from the 44 percent who said they had such support in 2018, a statistically significant difference. Higher incomes, education levels and home ownership are associated with having more people to turn to for help. The groups where the proportion of residents with five or more people for support falls below 30 percent include blacks (29 percent), those without a high school diploma (26 percent), those employed part-time (23 percent), those who are divorced (22 percent) the unemployed (21 percent) and those who are not married but living with a partner (17 percent). Young adults, though, saw a significant drop in the proportion saying they had at least five people to turn to for support in a long-term emergency, from 58 percent to 31 percent.