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Nearly 40% of Americans can't cover an unexpected $400 expense: Report

Traders and financial professionals work ahead of the closing bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), May 13, 2019 in New York City. (AFP photo)

Nearly 40 percent of Americans would struggle to cover an unexpected $400 expense, despite the country’s 10-year economic growth, according to a new report by the US Federal Reserve.

The report shows that many US households have experienced considerable financial gains since 2013, but the decade-long economic expansion and the low unemployment rate have done “little to narrow the persistent economic disparities by race, education, and geography.”

About 27 percent of those surveyed would need to borrow money or sell something to come up with the $400 emergency fund and an additional 12 percent would not be able to cover it at all, said the Federal Reserve, also known as the Fed, the US central bank.

One in five American adults had major, unexpected medical bills to pay in 2018, and one in four avoided necessary medical care last year because they couldn't afford it, the survey revealed.

The poll also found that 17 percent of adults are not able to pay all of their current month’s bills in full. Another 12 percent of adults would be unable to pay their current month’s bills if they also had an unexpected $400 expense that they had to pay.

The findings were published Friday in the “Report on the Economic Well-being of US Households for 2018,” a study the Fed has been conducting since 2013.

The 2018 results are very similar to those from the Federal Reserve's 2017 survey.

The Fed indicated that a primary goal of the 2018 study was to explore the reasons behind persistent financial fragility across much of the US.


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