All chapters

Birthweight and preterm birthThe starting linePublished

In counties of 100,000 or more residents, the share of births under 2,500 grams rises from 7.4% in the least deprived tenth of counties to 9.7% in the most deprived, and the rate for non-Hispanic Black mothers is higher than for non-Hispanic white mothers in every quartile of county deprivation.

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Infant mortalityThe first yearPublished

Infant mortality in 2018 to 2022 ran from 3.7 per 1,000 in Massachusetts and New Hampshire to 8.7 in Mississippi, and across large counties it rises from 3.9 in the least deprived quarter to 7.2 in the most deprived, with Black mothers' infants dying at 2.2 times the rate of white mothers' in 2018 and 2019.

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Where births are fallingThe vanishing cradlePublished

Births in the counties that CDC WONDER identifies fell 4.6% from 2018 to 2024, by 5.6% in the least deprived quartile of counties and 7.3% in the most deprived, while births to mothers aged 15 to 29 fell and births to mothers aged 35 to 44 rose.

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Smoking in pregnancyBefore the first breathPublished

In the 530 large counties with a usable count, the share of births to mothers who reported smoking fell from 5.4% in 2018 to 1.9% in 2024, and within a state it is 3.9 points lower per doubling of county income when counties are weighted by births.

Countieswonder-natalityadichrpublished-estimates

Test scores, class and raceThe classroom staircasePublished

Average achievement in third through eighth grade differs by 2.54 grade levels between the 5th and 95th percentile of counties, and it rises with county income, with a positive slope in 45 of 45 states.

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Gender gaps in reading and mathTwo gaps, one districtPublished

Girls scored higher than boys in reading in 99.9% of school districts, while the math gap, male minus female, rose from −0.20 grade levels in the lowest-income tenth of districts to +0.08 in the highest.

Institutionssedaacs

School discipline and incarcerationThe crossroadsPublished

In the 2020 to 2021 school year, out-of-school suspensions ran from 3.1 per thousand students in the least deprived tenth of districts to 23.6 in the most deprived, Black students were suspended at 2.2 times the white rate in the same districts, and among children from low-income families raised in the same tracts, 5.2% of Black children and 1.9% of white children were incarcerated on Census Day 2010.

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College access, price and earningsThe toll boothPublished

A decade after entry, the median former student who received federal aid earned $28,330 at the median for-profit college and $42,014 at the median public college, and the average resident of a county in the most deprived tenth lives 29.3 miles from the nearest four-year college, against 6.1 miles in the least deprived tenth.

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Race, income and mobilityTwo ladders, one streetPublished

White children from low-income families reached a higher adult income rank than Black children raised in the same tract in 92.5% of the 30,997 tracts where both are estimated, and across the 1,265 counties with life expectancy estimates for both groups, weighted by population, non-Hispanic white life expectancy exceeds non-Hispanic Black by 4.4 years.

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Teen birthsA generation backPublished

Among women born in 1978 to 1983 whose parents were at the 25th income percentile, the Opportunity Atlas predicts a teen birth for 38.5% of those raised in tracts in the most deprived tenth by their 2019 to 2023 deprivation rank and 12.9% in the least deprived tenth, and Black women's predicted share exceeds white women's by 17.6 points in the same tracts, with no detectable change across levels of deprivation.

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Home value, income and redliningThe deed and the ledgerPublished

Life expectancy is 2.2 years higher for each doubling of a ZIP code area's median home value, and tracts graded A on the 1930s HOLC maps have a life expectancy of 80.9 years against 76.8 years in tracts graded D, for deaths in 2010 to 2015.

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Mortgage denialsThe application and the answerPublished

Lenders denied 13.8% of the home-purchase applications they decided in 2024 in the most deprived tenth of tracts and 7.8% in the least deprived, and in the tracts that have published rates for both groups, 7.4% of all tracts, non-Hispanic Black applicants were denied 10.0 percentage points more often than non-Hispanic white applicants.

Neighborhoodshmdaholcadipublished-estimates

Work, wages and access to jobsJobs here, workers therePublished

In the fifth of counties with the fewest local jobs per job held by residents, 45.4% of the jobs held by residents were in the top earnings band of the 2019 LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics against 39.5% of the jobs located in those counties, so what residents earn and what local employers pay describe different jobs.

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Renting, affordability and evictionThe first of the monthPublished

45.6% of renter households with a computed burden spent more than 30% of their income on housing in 2018 to 2022, against 20.8% of owner households, and the gap is widest at incomes between 30% and 80% of the area median family income.

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Health behaviors and the supply of careThe body keeps the addressPublished

In the most deprived tenth of census tracts, the share of adults who saw a dentist in the past year was 24.4 points lower than in the least deprived tenth, and the share who had a routine checkup was 3.6 points higher.

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Health behaviors, person by personThe rich person's vicePublished

Among adults, the share who binged on alcohol in the past month was 13.3% in the lowest of five household income bands and 20.4% in the highest, while smoking, obesity and physical inactivity were each less common in the highest band.

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Air pollutionThe air you're assignedPublished

The national traffic-pollution percentile of a census tract has a correlation of −0.41 with the Area Deprivation Index across tracts but +0.19 within counties, and the NO₂ percentile rises with the Hispanic share of residents from 33 in the lowest decile to 73 in the highest.

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Multiple chronic conditionsWhere illness keeps companyPublished

Weighted by adults, a tract in the most deprived tenth is high on 5.7 of nine chronic conditions on average, against 0.5 in the least deprived tenth, and the conditions correlate at +0.49 across tracts, a figure that is +0.47 after an approximation of the model's census inputs and state effects is removed, which does not show that the overlap is real.

Neighborhoodsplacesadiacsusaleeppublished-estimates

Place and the length of a lifeTwo addressesPublished

Life expectancy at birth is lower in more deprived neighborhoods, 74.0 against 82.3 years in the most and least deprived tenths of census tracts for deaths in 2010 to 2015, and county averages conceal differences within counties.

Neighborhoodsusaleepadiplacesacscensus-tigerpublished-estimates

Gun homicide and the causes of early deathThe sliverPublished

The tract clusters with the highest firearm homicide rates hold 50% of the deaths implied for 2022 to 2024 and 9.5% of residents outside New York City, and in Cook County the residents of the highest-rate clusters have a life expectancy of 71.7 years (deaths in 2010 to 2015), 9.5 fewer than those in clusters with no recorded deaths.

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Overdose, alcohol and suicideTwo despairsPublished

Across counties, suicide death rates are only weakly related to overdose and homicide rates (population-weighted correlations of +0.13 and −0.02), and among the larger counties where CDC WONDER publishes every year, overdose exceeds alcohol-induced deaths in 479 of 545 and the population-weighted correlation of county deprivation is +0.42 with suicide but +0.13 with alcohol-induced death rates.

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Mortality trends, 2018 to 2024Last callPublished

The national overdose death rate peaked in 2022 at 50.5% above its 2019 level and was 8.5% above it in 2024, the alcohol-induced rate was still 15.5% above its 2019 level in 2024, and CDC's modeled county panel puts the overdose rise at 54.7%, a difference that tracks a roughly constant number of deaths the panel does not count.

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Violence and the life-expectancy gapThe lost yearsPublished

A rough accounting, not an age-specific decomposition, attributes 4.8% of the gap of 8.3 years in life expectancy between the most and the least deprived tenths of tracts to homicide, and 18.5% of the difference in the clusters with the highest homicide rates.

Neighborhoodsinjury-violenceusaleepadiacspublished-estimates

Civic life, loneliness and partnershipAlone togetherPublished

Voter turnout and census self-response fall across deciles of county deprivation, from 72.1% to 56.4% and from 68.6% to 47.6%, and Gallup respondents who are partnered rate their lives 0.50 ladder points higher than others, in counties with low and high social capital alike.

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Life evaluation and daily feelingsThe ladder and the dayPublished

Gallup respondents in the most deprived tenth of counties rate their lives 0.24 ladder points lower than those in the least deprived tenth, a gap that turns positive at the same nominal household income and is near zero or below once county rent levels are allowed for, while physical pain stays more common there under both comparisons and, across the larger counties and weighted by respondents, its county average correlates +0.65 with county deaths of despair.

Individualsgalluphud-fmrwonder-ucdadijec-social-capitalacspublished-estimatesusaleep

Mental distress in young adultsThe young and the anxiousPublished

Frequent mental distress among adults 18 to 24 rose from 12.3% in 2014 to 25.3% in 2022 and was 21.8% in 2024, while the rate for adults 50 to 64 moved from 12.5% to 14.4%.

Individualsbrfss

Disability, retirement and MedicareThe twilightPublished

Adult disability rises from 23.3% to 42.9% across tenths of tracts by deprivation and the disabled-worker share of Social Security beneficiaries from 7.2% to 16.8% across fifths of ZIP codes, while Medicare payments per fee-for-service beneficiary show no detectable difference between the least and most deprived fifths of counties and, weighted by residents, county values of expected age at death at 40 spread more for the poorest income quartile than for the richest.

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Well-being across the life spanTwo clocks of a lifePublished

Life evaluation in Gallup interviews from 2009 to 2017 averaged 6.84 at ages 45 to 54 and 7.38 at ages 75 to 94, with a far smaller midlife fall in households of $90,000 or more than in households under $36,000, while stress was 44.6% at ages 45 to 54 and 18.0% at ages 75 to 94.

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Eight types of neighborhoodThe eight AmericasPublished

K-means sorts 77,745 census tracts into eight types whose mean life expectancy for deaths in 2010 to 2015, itself one of the 13 inputs, runs from 72.3 years to 82.3 years, and a silhouette of 0.15 says the types are not sharply separated.

Neighborhoodsacsadiusaleepopportunity-atlasplacescensus-tigerpublished-estimates

Places that beat the modelCodaPublished

Five census measures account for 44.0% of the variation in tract upward mobility, counties below that prediction cluster in the South and the largest counties above it lie around New York, and counties above it lost tax filers on net in filing years 2022 and 2023, a correlation of −0.44.

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Gradients, slopes and varianceThe factory floorPublished

Life expectancy is 1.12 years lower per ten-point step of the ADI within counties and lower in all 267 metros, and 70.3 percent of the variance of tract life expectancy lies between tracts in the same county, of which 26.7 points are estimation error in the modeled tract estimates.

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The anatomy of a deprivation indexWeighing the ingredientsPublished

The Area Deprivation Index ranks census tracts almost as median home value does, with a rank correlation of −0.988 across 75,717 tracts (negative because the index rises as home values fall), and the home value term alone accounts for 74.3% of the variance of the score that the formula produces.

Neighborhoodsadiacssviusaleepopportunity-atlas

A deprivation index at two zoomsTwo zoomsPublished

A county's percentile on a deprivation index follows the average of its tracts' percentiles, with a correlation of 0.96, yet 32.7% of residents live in a tract more than 25 percentile points from their county's percentile.

Neighborhoodsadiacsusaleepopportunity-atlas

Families of placesSorting instead of rankingPublished

K-means sorts 75,717 census tracts into 4 families on 15 deprivation measures, and life expectancy for deaths in 2010 to 2015, which the sorting never used, runs from 74.7 years in the high-poverty family to 81.7 years in the high-income family.

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Suppressed counties in death dataThe counties that don't countPublished

CDC WONDER withheld the death count in 47.1% to 57.9% of county-years from 2018 to 2023, in county-years that hold 10.1% to 14.8% of residents, and in counties of 25,000 to 250,000 residents those it publishes in every year have higher death rates in CDC's injury and violence panel than those it withholds in some year.

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