CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

Lately you’ve probably heard a lot about bankers. What what about the bankees?

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, across the country 7.7 percent of households don’t have a checking or savings account (that is, they are “unbanked”). Another 17.9 percent have checking or savings accounts, but they still rely on alternative financial services like check cashing, payday loans and pawnshops, which typically have very unfavorable terms for borrowers.

The Pew Charitable Trusts has put together state-by-state information on what share of people use the traditional banking system, shown in the interactive map below.

Click on any state to see what share of its households don’t access the traditional banking system. You’ll also see how much it costs to maintain a checking account and make an overdraft transfer in that state.

As you might expect, higher fees discourage families from using banks. As the Pew study cites, the 2009 F.D.I.C. National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households found that 31 percent of households that dropped a bank account said they did so because of service charges, minimum balance requirements or overdraft fees.

Mississippians are most cut off from the traditional banking system: 16.4 percent of households in the state do not have a checking or savings account. On the other hand, almost every household in Utah uses the traditional banking system; just 1.7 percent of households there are unbanked.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=03904dcfa702edba68f44e608ca93e5d