Fiscally unfit.

Los Angeles received the dubious distinction of being named the third-least "fiscally fit" area in the country in a recent report commissioned by State Farm Life Insurance Co.

The ranking was based on household levels of investment, life insurance and quality of life in 50 metropolitan areas.

Los Angeles regularly finds itself low on the surveys conducted by Sperling's Best-Places Inc., the Portland, Ore.-based research firm that conducted the report and that has been ranking U.S. cities on everything from safest place to live to best places to be single and dating for 17 years.

"It's the tyranny of demographics," said Christopher Thornberg, senior economist at UCLA Anderson Forecast. "There's no secret to this, 30 percent of people in this town are born overseas and most of them don't have a college or even high school education. People at that low-income level don't worry about life insurance."

L.A. scored well for low number of smokers and overweight people but it wasn't enough to compensate for its last place number of people with life insurance, or second-lowest in overall investment, said Bert Sperling, president of Sperling's BestPlaces.

Topping the list was Salt Lake City. The only two major cities faring worse than L.A. were Chicago (49) and Miami (50).