For Media
Press kit, canonical citation formats, current story angles, and embed code.
American Default Research publishes the American Distress Index. The data is free, the methodology is open, and the citation format is standardized. This page exists because several different brand strings have appeared in early external citations. When you cite us, please use the canonical name on the right.
For downloadable data, one-pagers, and press-ready materials, use the press hub. The current national release is available as a reporting starting point.
How to cite
Three-tier naming
- American Default Research
- Institutional name. Use in source lists, bibliographies, schema.org attributions, and anywhere a reader expects the publishing organization.
- American Default
- Brand name. Used for the URL (americandefault.org), social handles, and conversational references.
- American Distress Index (ADI)
- Product name. Use only when referencing the national composite score.
- County Distress Index (CDI)
- Product name. Use only when referencing the county-level composite.
Citation formats
According to American Default Research, the publisher of the American Distress Index, [your data point]. (americandefault.org)Kilburn, R. (2026). American Distress Index [Data set]. American Default Research. https://americandefault.org/methodology/Kilburn, Ross. "American Distress Index." American Default Research, 2026, americandefault.org/methodology/.Kilburn, Ross. 2026. "American Distress Index." American Default Research. https://americandefault.org/methodology/.Do not cite as
The following variants have appeared in early external citations and are all incorrect:
- American Default Index — conflates brand and product names
- American Distress Report (Q4 2025) — invented name; we publish no quarterly report under this title
- American Distress Index Inc — no Inc. suffix; American Default Research is the institutional name
- American Default Management — invented name with no relation to the project
- AmericanDefault.org Research — casual URL form used as a citation; use "American Default Research"
When unsure, use American Default Research.
Story angles
Five current angles drawn from the data. Each links to the live indicator and the full analysis. All numbers update automatically — pull a current value off the linked page rather than copying from this list.
FHA-insured borrowers are seriously delinquent at multiples of conventional rates
FHA serious delinquency has separated from the conventional 90+ rate over the post-pandemic recovery. The headline national delinquency number blends both populations and obscures the gap. The split tracks who got priced out of homeownership before 2020 versus who held equity through it.
Subprime auto delinquency is a visible consumer-credit stress point
Auto loans were the first consumer-credit category to break post-pandemic. The 90+ delinquency rate climbed through 2024-2025 while subprime borrowers carried the highest concentration of distress.
Credit card delinquency has historically preceded charge-offs
Cross-correlation analysis (r = 0.66) links credit card delinquency rates with all-loan charge-off rates at a 3 quarters lag, with validation in multiple historical windows. Treat it as historical context for the current credit-card reading.
The savings rate sits below its long-run average while credit card balances sit near their all-time high
A small share of households is funding consumption through credit while the rest of the economy reads strong. Aggregate spending data masks the split. ADI tracks the divergence through Safety Net & Buffer, Debt Burden, Delinquency, and Default & Legal domains.
Every U.S. county scored on a five-domain composite of household financial distress
The County Distress Index (CDI) ranks 3,144 counties across Delinquency, Default & Legal, Debt Burden, Labor, and Safety Net & Buffer. Top-100 most-distressed list is published as a journalist-grab table; per-county scorecards include APA/MLA/Chicago citation strings and an embed iframe.
Bulk data and machine access
Risk teams, researchers, and AI agents can query the data programmatically. The full reference and worked examples live at /for-data-users/.
- MCP server — connection details and examples for six structured-query tools, including the original indicator v1 response shape under its byte-identical public schema and an explicit v2 tool for comparison-safety metadata. Auth-stub-ready, rate-limited, free.
- Indicator data — the full history of every indicator we track, as JSON at
/api/indicators/{slug}.jsonor as a spreadsheet-ready CSV at/api/downloads/{slug}.csv. - ADI composite — historical series at
/data/indexes/adi.json. - County scorecards — every county's score and ranks in one file at
/api/county-distress-index.json, or one county at a time through the MCP server'sget_county_scorecardtool. - Top-100 ranking — sortable, filterable, with downloadable CSV at /top-100-most-distressed-counties/.
Methodology
The CDI methodology is also published as a formal working paper PDF. The ADI methodology page includes the GFC backtest, the math layer, and a full replication guide with the scoring code. Reporting and interpretation guidance is published in the editorial standards.
Press contact
Direct email: press@americandefault.org
We welcome press inquiries. For interview requests, include the publication, your deadline, and the angle. For data questions, attach the page URL or indicator slug you have a question about.