Updated April 2026 · U.S. Census Bureau data
Pennsylvania City Spending Rankings
Pennsylvania has 10 cities with 50,000 or more residents covered by CitySpend, totaling 2.5M in covered population. The average Fiscal Health Score across these cities is 67/100, sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances. Pennsylvania's covered cities post a healthy average Fiscal Health Score of 67/100 (grade B). On the whole, Pennsylvania cities run balanced budgets, manageable debt loads, and adequately funded pension systems. Individual cities still vary, the rankings below show which are pulling above and below the state average.
Pennsylvania Fiscal Profile
Across all covered Pennsylvania cities, the largest aggregate spending categories are fire protection at $12.1B and police at $3.0B. That mix reflects Pennsylvania's overall service-delivery model, in some states police and fire dominate; in others, education or roads take the largest aggregate share when cities operate their own school districts.
Healthiest and Most Stressed Cities
Top Fiscal Performers
Most Fiscally Stressed
All 10 Cities in Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
Pop. 1.6M
Pittsburgh, PA
Pop. 304K
Allentown, PA
Pop. 125K
Erie, PA
Pop. 95K
Reading, PA
Pop. 95K
Bethlehem, PA
Pop. 77K
Scranton, PA
Pop. 76K
Lancaster, PA
Pop. 58K
Levittown, PA
Pop. 51K
Harrisburg, PA
Pop. 50K
How These Rankings Are Calculated
City Fiscal Health Scores combine budget balance and reserves (25%), debt burden per capita (20%), pension funded ratio (20%), spending efficiency (15%), revenue diversity (10%), and three-year trend direction (10%). All inputs come from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances. For the largest cities, we cross-reference the Lincoln Institute's Fiscally Standardized Cities database to adjust for school-district and county overlap. Pension data comes from the Public Plans Database. Best-practice weighting follows guidance from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA). Read the full methodology.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many cities in Pennsylvania are covered by CitySpend?
CitySpend covers 10 cities in Pennsylvania with 50,000 or more residents, totaling 2.5M in population. Smaller municipalities, towns, and unincorporated areas are excluded from the dataset.
What is Pennsylvania's average Fiscal Health Score?
Pennsylvania's 10 covered cities post an average Fiscal Health Score of 67/100. The score combines budget balance and reserves, debt burden per capita, pension funding, spending efficiency, revenue diversity, and three-year trend direction. Each city is benchmarked against population peers, so a 200,000-resident city is compared to other mid-size cities, not against the largest cities in the country.
Where does Pennsylvania city spending data come from?
Every figure on this page is drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances, with population estimates from the American Community Survey. For the largest cities, we cross-reference the Lincoln Institute's Fiscally Standardized Cities database to adjust for school-district overlap. Federal grant flows come from USASpending.gov; pension data, where available, comes from the Public Plans Database.
Which Pennsylvania cities have the strongest fiscal health?
Harrisburg (A), Bethlehem (A), Reading (A) rank among the top fiscal performers in Pennsylvania. Strong scores typically pair balanced budgets with low debt-per-capita and well-funded pensions. See the rankings below for the full list.
Which Pennsylvania cities are most fiscally stressed?
Erie (D), Philadelphia (D), Levittown (C) rank toward the bottom of the Pennsylvania fiscal health distribution. Common stress signals include pension underfunding, elevated debt service, and revenue concentration in a single tax source. A low score is a screening signal, not a verdict, always read the city's audited Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (ACFR) before drawing conclusions.
Pennsylvania has 10 cities with 50,000 or more residents covered by CitySpend, totaling 2.5M in covered population. The average Fiscal Health Score across these cities is 67/100, sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances. Pennsylvania's covered cities post a healthy average Fiscal Health Score of 67/100 (grade B). On the whole, Pennsylvania cities run balanced budgets, manageable debt loads, and adequately funded pension systems. Individual cities still vary, the rankings below show which are pulling above and below the state average.
this entity is one of the data points covered by this site’s U.S. municipal and county government finances dataset. The detail above comes directly from the Census Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances; the context that follows situates the headline numbers against the broader distribution across U.S. cities, counties, and states.
The methodology behind every numeric value on this page is publicly documented on the the Census Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances portal and described in detail on this site’s methodology page. Refresh cadence varies by underlying series; the page surfaces the as-of date for each number so readers can trace any figure back to the source release.
Practical use of this page is in combination with the comparison and ranking pages elsewhere on the site, which surface the same data for this entity’s peers within U.S. cities, counties, and states. A single-entity reading without peer context can be misleading when an entity is an outlier on one axis but typical on another.