Chapter 6.3 · The ladder and the day · Report

Life evaluation and daily feelings

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 near zero or below at the same household income, characteristics and county rent.

Author: Vishal Singh
Affiliation: NYU Stern
Published: 9 October 2026

Every estimate of the chapter with its interval and every figure as a table, generated from the chapter's data files. Table n of this report is figure n of the chapter. The same report as Markdown: report.md.

Identification

Title

Life evaluation and daily feelings

Label

The ladder and the day

Chapter

6.3 (Part VI, Environment, connection and well-being; An American life)

Question

How do people rate their lives and describe their days in richer and poorer places, and do the two measures move together?

Dek

Grain

individuals

Status

published

Published

9 October 2026

Updated

not revised

Data sources

Gallup U.S. Daily Poll. Gallup U.S. Daily tracking poll: Cantril ladder now and in five years (2009-2017) and seven feelings yesterday (2008-2017), household income, age, sex, race and education; aggregates only; years: 2008-2017; weights: none (unweighted)
Area Deprivation Index. Area Deprivation Index 2023, national rank: tract ranks averaged to counties, and ZCTA ranks joined on the respondent's ZIP code; years: 2023 release (version 4.0.1; built on ACS 2019-2023); weights: 2019-2023 tract population for counties
American Community Survey. ACS 2019-2023 tract population, the weight for county deprivation; years: 2019-2023 (5-year); weights: 2019-2023 tract population
JEC Social Capital Index. County rate of deaths of despair for 2015 (CDC multiple cause of death), as compiled by the Joint Economic Committee for 1,341 larger counties: a cross-check series whose population base and age adjustment are not documented; years: 2018 release (components from about 2010-2016); weights: none (county rate)
CDC WONDER underlying cause of death. CDC WONDER underlying cause of death: county drug, alcohol and suicide counts and populations, 2018-2023, complete counties only, to check the JEC rate; years: 2018-2024; weights: none (crude rates from counts)
USALEEP life expectancy. Life expectancy at birth, 2010-2015 deaths, 2020 tracts: the canonical variance split among states, counties and tracts, quoted from the chapter that owns it; years: 2010-2015; weights: 2019-2023 tract population
Published estimates from cited studies. One estimate from the Moving to Opportunity experiment (Ludwig and coauthors 2012) and two income thresholds from Kahneman and Deaton (2010) and Killingsworth and coauthors (2023), quoted beside their citations; years: as reported in each study; weights: as in the papers
HUD Fair Market Rents. HUD Fair Market Rents, fiscal year 2025, two-bedroom, by FMR area averaged to counties: a stand-in for relative price levels in the interview years; years: fiscal year 2025 (October 2024 to September 2025); weights: none (one rent per FMR area)

Canonical URL

https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings

Markdown

https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/report.md

BibTeX

@misc{singh2026lifeevaluationanddailyfeelings,
  author = {Singh, Vishal},
  title = {Life evaluation and daily feelings},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings},
  note = {In ZIP Code Destiny. Published 9 October 2026.}
}

Principal estimates

The facts the dek and the opening prose cite, in order of appearance. Every fact is in the table of all estimates below.

Estimand	Population	Period	Value	Interval	n	Weights	Source	Fact id
difference between the unweighted mean ladder scores of the least and the most deprived tenth (county ADI is the mean of its tracts' ADI 2023 national ranks weighted by 2019-2023 tract population), interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the two extreme tenths of interviews, ranked by the Area Deprivation Index of the respondent's county	interviews in 2009 to 2017	0.24	95% CI 0.18 to 0.31	442,036 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll	ladder_drop_county
gap between the extreme tenths after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in 2009 to 2017	0.13	95% CI 0.10 to 0.16	350,199 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll	ladder_gap_adj_county
gap between the extreme tenths after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, with a quintile of county rent also in the cells, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in 2009 to 2017	−0.02	95% CI −0.05 to 0.00	350,199 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents	ladder_gap_rentq
difference between the unweighted shares reporting the feeling a lot of the day yesterday in the most and the least deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by county ADI, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with an answer to the physical pain item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	8.8	95% CI 7.9 to 9.7	526,330 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll	gap_physical_pain
the same difference after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent and an answer to the physical pain item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	1.8	95% CI 1.4 to 2.3	412,916 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll	gap_adj_physical_pain
the pain gap after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, with a quintile of county rent also in the cells, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income, a county rent and an answer to the pain item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews 2008 to 2017	1.2	95% CI 0.8 to 1.7	412,916 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents	pain_gap_rentq
correlation across counties between the county mean of the item and the JEC county rate of deaths of despair (CDC multiple cause of death, 2015), counties weighted by their respondents with the item, bootstrap over counties	counties with a deaths-of-despair rate and at least 100 respondents with each item	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	+0.65	95% CI 0.61 to 0.69	1,337 counties	respondents with the item in each county	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll	r_des_pain
count of interviews in the extract (unweighted)	all interviews in the Gallup U.S. Daily extract	2008 to 2017	3,530,270			none (unweighted count)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll	n_interviews_all

Findings

Gallup respondents in the most deprived tenth of counties rated their lives 0.24 (95% CI 0.18 to 0.31) ladder points lower than respondents in the least deprived tenth. At the same nominal household income, and the same age, sex, race and education, the order reverses, and the most deprived tenth scores 0.13 (95% CI 0.10 to 0.16) points higher. Allowing for local rent levels removes that difference. With a quintile of county rent added to the comparison it becomes −0.02 (95% CI −0.05 to 0.00) points, so these data cannot separate a place difference from a price difference.

Daily feelings behave differently from the ladder. Physical pain was more common in the most deprived tenth of counties by 8.8 (95% CI 7.9 to 9.7) points, by 1.8 (95% CI 1.4 to 2.3) points at the same characteristics and nominal income, and by 1.2 (95% CI 0.8 to 1.7) points with county rent also allowed for. Stress, in contrast, was less common there. Across larger counties, weighting each county by its respondents, the share reporting pain correlates +0.65 (95% CI 0.61 to 0.69) with the county rate of deaths of despair. That is the highest of the seven feelings under every weighting and comparison this chapter tries.

The data are the Gallup U.S. Daily survey: 3,530,270 interviews from 2008 to 2017, one row per interview, with new respondents every year and no one followed over time. The extract has no survey weights, so every figure is unweighted and levels can differ from the weighted figures Gallup publishes. The unit of this chapter is the person. The deprivation measures describe the county or ZIP area where the person lives, so a comparison between tenths of places is partly a comparison between kinds of people. Every interval is a 95% interval clustered by the respondent's county.

Two kinds of question about a life

The Cantril ladder asks respondents to place their life on a ladder whose bottom rung is the worst possible life and whose top rung is the best possible one.[1] It records a judgment of a life as a whole, which is why this chapter calls it life evaluation. The extract holds that ladder and a second one for where the respondent expects to stand in the future, which this chapter calls the expected ladder. Gallup also asked whether respondents experienced each of seven feelings during a lot of the day yesterday: enjoyment, happiness, worry, stress, sadness, anger and physical pain. Those answers record a day, not a life, and the chapter calls them daily feelings. The two kinds of measure are analyzed side by side and never combined into one index.

Not every item was asked in every year (Table 1). Both ladder items are used for 2009 to 2017. In 2008 political questions preceded the ladder, which makes life evaluation run low, and Gallup removed them for part of the sample in early January 2009 and added a transition question in April 2009.[2] The feelings are not affected and start in 2008. Enjoyment, worry, stress and pain run to 2017, happiness and sadness stop after 2016, and anger was asked from 2008 to 2013 and again in 2016. The ladder reached 85% of the interviews in 2009 and 49% of those from 2013 to 2017, when each item went to a subsample, so the pooled ladder figures weight 2009 to 2012 most. The ladder is present in 2,217,485 interviews that also have a county.

Table 1. The ladder runs from 2009 to 2017 and the feelings from 2008, but happiness and sadness stop after 2016 and anger was not asked in 2014, 2015 or 2017

Place is attached to each respondent before any aggregation, and only aggregates are published. The county comes from the respondent's ZIP code and is approximate near county lines. 10,731 of the 3,530,270 interviews have no county and are dropped, which leaves 3,519,539 interviews in 3,142 counties. County deprivation is the mean of the Area Deprivation Index national ranks of the county's tracts, weighted by tract population, where a higher rank means more deprived. 784 interviews are in counties with no index.

ZIP-area deprivation is the index for the ZCTA that carries the ZIP code's number. A ZIP code is not a ZCTA and Connecticut has no ZCTAs in the project files, so this measure covers 97.6% of the interviews. Respondents are cut into tenths of each deprivation measure, so each tenth holds about a tenth of the interviews. Household income is the respondent's reported bracket, in nominal dollars, available for 81% of the interviews.

The ladder falls with deprivation and reverses only at the same nominal income

Across tenths of county deprivation the mean ladder score falls from 7.17 (95% CI 7.11 to 7.23) in the least deprived tenth to 6.93 (95% CI 6.91 to 6.94) in the most deprived, and the point estimates fall from each tenth to the next (Table 2). The tenths are tenths of interviews, not of counties. The least deprived holds interviews from 45 counties and the most deprived from 1,205.

The ZIP-area measure gives a longer fall, from 7.29 (95% CI 7.24 to 7.34) to 6.87 (95% CI 6.85 to 6.88), a drop of 0.42 (95% CI 0.37 to 0.48) points against 0.24 (95% CI 0.18 to 0.31) for counties. A finer unit of place separates respondents further. Chapter 8.4, Place and the length of a life draws the corresponding gradient in life expectancy for tracts.

Table 2. The ladder score is 0.24 points lower in the most deprived tenth of counties, 0.13 points higher at the same nominal household income and other characteristics, and −0.02 once county rent levels also enter

The tenths differ in who lives in them. The second and third tabs of the figure compare respondents only with others in the same cell of five-year age band, sex, race, education and household income bracket, using one sample at every step, the 1,759,964 interviews that report every one of those characteristics and a county rent. Education has three levels and ages above the oldest band share it. Comparing within cells of age and sex leaves the county gap at −0.30 (95% CI −0.36 to −0.23) points, close to its starting value of −0.27 (95% CI −0.34 to −0.21) on the same interviews. Adding education narrows it to −0.11 (95% CI −0.15 to −0.07), adding race and ethnicity changes it little, and adding household income turns it to +0.13 (95% CI 0.10 to 0.16).

In that comparison the adjusted mean ladder score is 7.10 (95% CI 7.08 to 7.11) in the most deprived tenth and 6.97 (95% CI 6.94 to 7.00) in the least deprived, so the ladder is 0.13 (95% CI 0.10 to 0.16) points higher in the most deprived tenth. The ZIP-area measure follows the same steps, from −0.21 (95% CI −0.25 to −0.17) with education to 0.07 (95% CI 0.04 to 0.10) higher with income. With a six-level education item the final gap is 0.13 (95% CI 0.10 to 0.16).

The last step assumes that one nominal bracket means one standard of living in every county, and the data do not support that. The interviews in the least deprived tenth come from counties where the HUD two-bedroom Fair Market Rent averages $2,697 (95% CI $2,594 to $2,800) a month, against $943 (95% CI $932 to $953) in the most deprived tenth. The rents are for fiscal year 2025 and stand in for relative price levels in 2008 to 2017, and counties in a metro share one value.

With a quintile of county rent added to the cells the gap is −0.02 (95% CI −0.05 to 0.00) points, and with the logarithm of rent as a linear control it is −0.04 (95% CI −0.07 to −0.01). At the ZIP-area scale the quintile version gives −0.06 (95% CI −0.09 to −0.03). Counting each county once, instead of each interview, gives +0.02 (95% CI −0.03 to 0.07). The sign of the reversal therefore depends on prices and on weighting, and the data cannot separate a place difference from a price difference.

Leaving the 2008 ladder in changes none of this. With it, the county drop is 0.26 (95% CI 0.19 to 0.33), the nominal-income gap +0.12 (95% CI 0.09 to 0.15), the rent-quintile gap −0.03 (95% CI −0.06 to 0.00) and the pooled income slope 0.256 (95% CI 0.252 to 0.259).

This comparison does not say that places have no bearing on how people rate their lives. Household income is one of the things a deprived place has less of, and the deprivation index is itself built from income, education, employment and housing, so comparing respondents within an income bracket removes part of what the index measures. In these data the ladder gradient across places is gone once respondents are compared with others of the same education and income, and whether a gap of the opposite sign remains depends on the price of living.

Daily feelings follow place less evenly than the ladder

The seven feelings do not share one gradient (Table 3). Physical pain was reported by 20.8% (95% CI 20.0% to 21.7%) of respondents in the least deprived tenth of counties and 29.6% (95% CI 29.2% to 30.0%) in the most deprived, a gap of 8.8 (95% CI 7.9 to 9.7) points. The gap is 11.0 (95% CI 10.3 to 11.7) points when places are tenths of ZIP areas. Apart from pain, no feeling differs by more than 2.1 points between the extreme tenths.

Sadness differs by 1.9 (95% CI 0.7 to 3.2) points and stress by −2.1 (95% CI −3.1 to −1.2) points, so sadness is more common in the most deprived tenth and stress is less common there. Enjoyment differs by −1.2 (95% CI −2.1 to −0.4), happiness by −0.6 (95% CI −1.4 to 0.2), worry by −1.1 (95% CI −2.3 to 0.2) and anger by −0.7 (95% CI −1.7 to 0.3).

Table 3. Physical pain is 8.8 percentage points more common in the most deprived tenth of counties, the largest gap of the seven feelings, and 1.8 at the same characteristics and 1.2 with county rent also allowed for

Comparing respondents within cells at nominal income shrinks the pain gap to 1.8 (95% CI 1.4 to 2.3) points, so that 80% (95% CI 77% to 84%) of the raw gap lines up with who lives in each tenth, and the remainder keeps its direction.

The other gaps change as well. Sadness becomes −1.7 (95% CI −2.4 to −1.0) points, worry moves from −1.1 (95% CI −2.3 to 0.2) to −3.7 (95% CI −4.6 to −2.8), anger to −1.3 (95% CI −1.9 to −0.6), and stress stays below zero at −2.3 (95% CI −3.0 to −1.6).

Enjoyment and happiness move above zero, to 1.6 (95% CI 1.0 to 2.2) and 1.8 (95% CI 1.2 to 2.4). Those reversals are the nominal-income reversals of the ladder, and they go with it when county rent is allowed for. With rent allowed for, the pain gap becomes 1.2 (95% CI 0.8 to 1.7) points, 1.1 (95% CI 0.6 to 1.5) with the logarithm of rent as the control and 1.7 (95% CI 1.1 to 2.3) with each county counted once.

No other gap is above zero once rent is allowed for. Enjoyment is −0.7, happiness −0.5, worry 0.5, stress 0.4, sadness 0.5 and anger 0.4, each within a point of zero. Stress is less common in the most deprived tenth as interviewed and at nominal income, and these data do not say why.

The ladder rises more steeply with income than the day does

The ladder score rises from 6.28 (95% CI 6.26 to 6.29) in the poorest household income bracket to 7.60 (95% CI 7.59 to 7.61) in the richest (Table 4). To compare slopes across items, the figure scales each item by its own standard deviation.

In those units the richest bracket sits 0.68 (95% CI 0.67 to 0.69) above the poorest on the ladder, against −0.51 (95% CI −0.52 to −0.50) for pain, −0.48 (95% CI −0.49 to −0.48) for sadness, −0.34 (95% CI −0.35 to −0.33) for worry and 0.37 (95% CI 0.37 to 0.38) for enjoyment. Stress differs by only −0.12 (95% CI −0.13 to −0.11).

Stress is common in the poorest bracket, 43.6% (95% CI 43.4% to 43.9%) of respondents against 37.7% (95% CI 37.3% to 38.0%) in the richest, and varies by at most 2.3 points across the other five brackets. Pain falls from 37.8% (95% CI 37.4% to 38.3%) of respondents in the poorest bracket to 16.1% (95% CI 15.9% to 16.3%) in the richest.

Table 4. The richest income bracket scores 0.68 standard deviations above the poorest on the ladder and −0.51 on physical pain, but only −0.12 on stress

Kahneman and Deaton found a similar split in the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Life evaluation kept rising with the logarithm of income, while a measure of emotional well-being rose with income and showed no further progress above about $75,000 a year.[3] Killingsworth, Kahneman and Mellers later reconciled that result with experience-sampling data in which well-being kept rising with income for most people and flattened above about $100,000 a year only for an unhappy minority.[4] The top bracket in the Gallup extract starts at $90,000, so these data cannot show whether any item flattens at higher incomes.

The expected ladder rises with income as the ladder now does, from 6.98 (95% CI 6.95 to 7.02) in the poorest bracket to 8.11 (95% CI 8.10 to 8.12) in the richest. Graham and Pinto, using Gallup surveys, report that optimism differs most by race and place among low-income Americans.[5]

The income gradient is nearly the same in every kind of county

The ladder's income gradient is nearly the same in all three bands of county deprivation (Table 5). Across all respondents the ladder rises 0.250 (95% CI 0.246 to 0.253) points for each step up the six income brackets. With county fixed effects, which compare each respondent only with others in the same county, it rises 0.251 (95% CI 0.247 to 0.255) points per step. Within any one income bracket, the three bands of counties differ by at most 0.12 points in the mean ladder score. In the poorest bracket the most deprived three tenths of counties score −0.09 (95% CI −0.13 to −0.05) points relative to the least deprived three tenths, and in the richest bracket 0.03 (95% CI 0.01 to 0.05).

Table 5. The income gradient of the ladder is nearly the same in all three bands of counties, 0.250 points per bracket across respondents and 0.251 within counties

Counties hold very little of the variation. The share of the variance in the ladder score that lies between counties, with states included, is 0.51% (95% CI 0.46% to 0.56%), and the rest lies between people in the same county. Chapter 10.1, Gradients, slopes and variance splits the variance of tract life expectancy, where states hold 13.7% and counties within states 15.9%, together 29.7% (the parts are rounded). The two shares are not strictly comparable, because a tract mean averages many people and a ladder score is one person's answer, so the county share of life expectancy would fall if it were measured for people.

Pain separates the bands, mostly among the poorest. In the poorest bracket pain is 6.6 (95% CI 5.7 to 7.5) points more common in the most deprived three tenths of counties than in the least deprived three tenths, and in the richest bracket 1.7 (95% CI 1.2 to 2.1) points.

Causal evidenceRandomized housing-voucher experiment

Whether an offer to move to a less poor neighborhood changes how happy adults say they are

The comparisons above are between different people, so they cannot say what a place does to the people in it. The Moving to Opportunity experiment assigned low-income families in public housing in five cities, by lottery, to be offered a voucher usable only in a lower-poverty neighborhood, to be offered an unrestricted voucher, or to stay where they were. Ludwig and coauthors surveyed the adults a decade or more later. Pooled over the two voucher groups, the offer of a move to a less disadvantaged area raised a standardized answer to one question about how happy things are these days by 0.098 (95% CI 0.022 to 0.174) standard deviations, with no detectable change in adult economic self-sufficiency.[6]

That is the effect of an offer, not of a move, on one happiness question asked of adults who began in public housing in very poor neighborhoods, and the estimate is small. It shows that an offer to move to a lower-poverty neighborhood can change a self-reported well-being measure without changing income. It does not cover the ladder or daily feelings, and it does not say how much of the gradient across Gallup counties is a place effect.

The ladder and the day move together, more tightly across counties

Respondents who reported happiness during a lot of the day yesterday rated their lives 1.57 (95% CI 1.55 to 1.59) ladder points higher than those who did not, and respondents who reported enjoyment rated them 1.46 (95% CI 1.44 to 1.47) higher (Table 6). Those who reported sadness rated their lives 1.33 (95% CI 1.32 to 1.35) points lower, and those who reported physical pain 0.91 (95% CI 0.90 to 0.93) lower.

Correlations are smaller than these gaps suggest, since enjoyment was reported by 86% of respondents and sadness by only 17%. Across respondents the ladder correlates +0.26 (95% CI 0.26 to 0.26) with enjoyment, −0.28 (95% CI −0.28 to −0.28) with worry, the strongest of the seven, −0.20 (95% CI −0.20 to −0.20) with pain and −0.18 (95% CI −0.18 to −0.18) with anger, the weakest.

Table 6. Across respondents the ladder correlates −0.28 with worry and +0.26 with enjoyment, and across county means it moves together with most feelings more tightly

Across counties the pairs move together more tightly. The county mean ladder correlates +0.59 (95% CI 0.56 to 0.63) with the county share reporting enjoyment, −0.62 (95% CI −0.66 to −0.58) with pain, −0.57 (95% CI −0.61 to −0.53) with sadness and −0.20 (95% CI −0.26 to −0.14) with stress, the one feeling whose county correlation is not larger than its correlation across respondents. County means need at least 100 respondents with each item. Averaging to counties removes variation between people, and a stronger correlation between averages is the usual result of doing so. It says nothing about how closely any one person's life rating and day are linked.

The measures also differ in what they follow. The ladder rises with income more steeply than any feeling does, and pain tracks both income and county deprivation, while stress follows neither much. The ladder answers a question about a life and the feelings answer a question about a day, and they share a direction without sharing a shape. Chapter 6.2, Civic life, loneliness and partnership uses the same ladder to compare partnered and other adults, and Chapter 6.4, Well-being across the life span takes up how the ladder and the feelings change with age, which this chapter holds fixed.

Pain is the feeling that tracks county deaths of despair

Felt despair is not an item in the Gallup survey. This chapter reads it from the items Gallup does ask: the pain, sadness, worry and stress that respondents reported for yesterday, and the ladder now and the expected ladder. The comparison is with the county rate of deaths of despair for 2015, from the Joint Economic Committee's compilation of CDC data for larger counties. Deaths of despair, in Case and Deaton's term, are deaths from suicide, drugs and alcohol.[7] Case and Deaton documented rising reports of chronic pain alongside rising mortality from suicide, drugs and alcohol among middle-aged white non-Hispanic Americans from 1999 to 2013.[8] Chapter 8.2, Overdose, alcohol and suicide maps the deaths themselves.

The Joint Economic Committee's file keeps the 2015 rate as a cross-check series, and it does not document the rate's population base or whether it is age adjusted. It is used here because it is the only county rate from the Gallup years, and it can be checked against CDC WONDER. The check uses the complete counties of the chapter on overdose, alcohol and suicide, those whose drug, alcohol and suicide counts are published in every year from 2018 to 2023. On those counties the two rates correlate +0.81 (95% CI 0.77 to 0.84) across 534 counties, weighted by respondents. The WONDER rate sums three crude rates, includes suicides by drug poisoning in both the drug and the suicide rate, and comes a decade after the interviews.

The county share reporting pain correlates +0.69 (95% CI 0.64 to 0.74) with the Joint Economic Committee rate on those counties and +0.58 (95% CI 0.51 to 0.64) with the WONDER rate, and the share reporting stress −0.14 (95% CI −0.23 to −0.05) with the WONDER rate.

Respondents in the lowest fifth of the county rate reported physical pain at 20.2% (95% CI 19.8% to 20.6%) and respondents in the highest fifth at 26.8% (95% CI 26.3% to 27.3%), a difference of 6.6 (95% CI 6.0 to 7.3) points, and the share rises at each step (Table 7).

The ladder falls from 7.15 (95% CI 7.12 to 7.18) to 7.00 (95% CI 6.98 to 7.02). The share reporting stress hardly moves, 37.4% (95% CI 36.9% to 37.9%) in the lowest fifth and 36.4% (95% CI 36.1% to 36.8%) in the highest.

Table 7. Physical pain is the feeling most closely tied to the county deaths-of-despair rate under every weighting and comparison, with a correlation of +0.65 across counties

The second tab compares county averages with the rate in 1,337 larger counties. With counties weighted by their respondents, the county share reporting pain correlates +0.65 (95% CI 0.61 to 0.69) with the rate, the ladder now −0.40 (95% CI −0.47 to −0.33), the expected ladder −0.54 (95% CI −0.60 to −0.49) and sadness +0.31 (95% CI 0.20 to 0.41).

Worry (+0.06 (95% CI −0.05 to 0.17)) and stress (−0.09 (95% CI −0.17 to −0.01)) barely correlate under that weighting. Counting each county once changes that. Worry rises to +0.36 (95% CI 0.29 to 0.45), stress to +0.19 (95% CI 0.11 to 0.28) and sadness to +0.45 (95% CI 0.39 to 0.52), while pain remains the strongest at +0.58 (95% CI 0.54 to 0.63). Correlations that give every county equal weight are dominated by the many small counties, and those weighted by respondents by the large ones. The statement that stress and worry do not follow the despair map therefore holds for the counties where most respondents live and not for all counties.

County averages also mix places with people. Respondents in the highest fifth of the rate average 55.5 (95% CI 55.1 to 56.0) years of age against 51.9 (95% CI 51.3 to 52.5) in the lowest. Comparing respondents within cells of age and sex before averaging to counties leaves the pain correlation at +0.62 (95% CI 0.58 to 0.66), so age and sex do not account for it.

Comparing within cells of age, sex, race, education and household income brings it to +0.43 (95% CI 0.38 to 0.48), still the highest of the feelings and the only negative feeling whose interval stays above zero. The correlation of the ladder changes sign to +0.14 (95% CI 0.07 to 0.22) in that comparison, which includes household income and education, while the comparison on age and sex alone leaves it at −0.47 (95% CI −0.53 to −0.40). Pain remains tied to the county rate of deaths of despair after respondents are compared on age, sex, race, education and household income, and no other negative feeling does.

The ladder gradient follows all four rankings of counties

Over the 3,121 counties that have every ranking, the ADI baseline gives a ladder score of 7.17 (95% CI 7.11 to 7.23) in the least deprived tenth of interviews and 6.93 (95% CI 6.91 to 6.94) in the most deprived, with a rank correlation of −0.98 between tenth and mean (Table 8). Under the standardized index, which applies the ADI's coefficients after standardizing each of its measures, the score runs from 7.22 (95% CI 7.19 to 7.25) to 6.94 (95% CI 6.92 to 6.96) with a correlation of −1.00. Ranking counties by median household income gives 7.22 (95% CI 7.19 to 7.24) and 6.94 (95% CI 6.92 to 6.95) (−1.00), and ranking them by the bachelor's degree share gives 7.24 (95% CI 7.21 to 7.26) and 6.90 (95% CI 6.89 to 6.92) (−0.96). Under the rule of Chapter 9.1, How far one ranking goes none of the three counts as a change, since the ends differ under each ranking and every correlation stays beyond 0.9 in absolute value.

Table 8. The ladder score is steadily worse toward the more deprived end under the ADI and under each of the three other rankings

What these data cannot show

The unit of the chapter is the person, but the place measures describe counties and ZIP areas, so a gap between tenths of places mixes the places with the people in them. Comparing respondents within cells handles only the characteristics the survey records. It does not handle health, disability, work or family, which go with pain. Household income is in nominal dollars and the rent file is a single fiscal year 2025 standard shared within metros, so the price comparison is a rough proxy, and neither it nor the nominal comparison identifies what places do to residents. The randomized Moving to Opportunity experiment is the evidence on that question, and it covers neither the ladder nor these feelings.

The survey has no weights, and the interviews are a repeated cross-section, not a panel, so the chapter shows differences between people and not changes within them. Pooled figures weight 2009 to 2012 most for the ladder and 2008 to 2012 for the feelings, and the chapter does not remove differences between years. Each feeling is a yes or no answer to whether the respondent had it during a lot of the day yesterday, which records neither intensity nor duration, and the ladder is a whole-number rating whose rungs different people may anchor differently. Answers given in one interview can color each other, as the 2008 ladder shows, and the survey cannot separate that for the other items.

The county is derived from the ZIP code and is approximate near county lines. ZIP-area deprivation treats a ZIP code as the ZCTA of the same number and drops Connecticut. County deprivation is built from Area Deprivation Index ranks that include income and education, so the index overlaps with the respondent characteristics used in the comparisons. The index is the 2023 release, built on ACS data for 2019 to 2023, and the interviews are from 2008 to 2017, which assumes that the ranking of places persisted. The deaths-of-despair rate is a single year for larger counties, a cross-check series with an undocumented population base and age adjustment, and its correlations are across counties, so they do not show that the people who report pain are the people who die.

Chapter 4.5, Mental distress in young adults measures frequent mental distress in a different survey with survey weights, and its estimates are not directly comparable with the unweighted Gallup levels here.

Tables

Table 1. The ladder runs from 2009 to 2017 and the feelings from 2008, but happiness and sadness stop after 2016 and anger was not asked in 2014, 2015 or 2017

Gallup U.S. Daily items used in this chapter: the years each was asked, interviews with a county and an answer, and the share of the interviews in those years that carry the item

Item	Kind	Years asked	Interviews with an answer	Share of interviews in those years (%)
Ladder now	Life evaluation	2009 to 2017	2,217,485	70
Ladder in five years	Life evaluation	2009 to 2017	2,124,998	67
Enjoyment	Positive feeling	2008 to 2017	2,625,590	75
Happiness	Positive feeling	2008 to 2016	2,464,754	78
Worry	Negative feeling	2008 to 2017	2,629,572	75
Stress	Negative feeling	2008 to 2017	2,629,276	75
Sadness	Negative feeling	2008 to 2016	2,469,420	78
Anger	Negative feeling	2008 to 2013 and 2016	2,099,828	85
Physical pain	Negative feeling	2008 to 2017	2,629,184	75

Note: The 2008 ladder answers are left out: political questions preceded the ladder in 2008 and the 2008 ladder runs low (Deaton 2012). Gallup removed the political questions for part of the sample in early January 2009 and added a transition question in April 2009. The feelings are not affected.

Note: Happiness and anger each have a few stray answers in years when the item was not asked; they are dropped.

Note: Feelings are answers to whether the respondent experienced the feeling during a lot of the day yesterday. The two ladder items are scored 0 to 10; the second asks where the respondent expects to stand in about five years.

Source: Gallup U.S. Daily, ladder 2009-2017 and feelings 2008-2017; unweighted counts of interviews with a county

Data: vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/figures/item_coverage.json

Table 2. The ladder score is 0.24 points lower in the most deprived tenth of counties, 0.13 points higher at the same nominal household income and other characteristics, and −0.02 once county rent levels also enter

Mean Cantril ladder score by decile of the deprivation of the respondent's county and ZIP area, as interviewed and after comparing respondents within cells, with the gap at each step

Table 2.1. As interviewed

The ladder score falls from 7.17 to 6.93 across deciles of county deprivation and from 7.29 to 6.87 across deciles of ZIP-area deprivation

Unweighted mean Cantril ladder score by decile of the Area Deprivation Index of the respondent's county and of the respondent's ZIP area, Gallup U.S. Daily interviews 2009 to 2017

conf_high	conf_low	decile	estimate	n	n_units	place
7.23	7.11	1	7.17	218,776	45	County deprivation
7.17	7.09	2	7.13	220,210	85	County deprivation
7.15	7.08	3	7.11	225,715	110	County deprivation
7.14	7.07	4	7.10	215,982	134	County deprivation
7.12	7.07	5	7.10	220,790	168	County deprivation
7.12	7.06	6	7.09	223,139	198	County deprivation
7.08	7.03	7	7.06	222,438	266	County deprivation
7.06	7.02	8	7.04	223,727	350	County deprivation
7.00	6.96	9	6.98	222,937	563	County deprivation
6.94	6.91	10	6.93	223,260	1,205	County deprivation
7.34	7.24	1	7.29	213,516	203	ZIP-area deprivation
7.24	7.15	2	7.20	215,235	343	ZIP-area deprivation
7.19	7.13	3	7.16	217,052	465	ZIP-area deprivation
7.15	7.10	4	7.13	217,305	614	ZIP-area deprivation
7.12	7.08	5	7.10	216,938	767	ZIP-area deprivation
7.07	7.03	6	7.05	217,457	964	ZIP-area deprivation
7.04	7.01	7	7.03	217,491	1,197	ZIP-area deprivation
7.00	6.97	8	6.98	217,224	1,451	ZIP-area deprivation
6.93	6.91	9	6.92	217,621	1,656	ZIP-area deprivation
6.88	6.85	10	6.87	217,263	1,806	ZIP-area deprivation

Table 2.2. Same characteristics

Among respondents of the same age, sex, race, education and nominal household income, the ladder score is 7.10 in the most deprived county decile and 6.97 in the least

Mean ladder score after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band, sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, by decile of county and ZIP-area deprivation, 2009 to 2017

conf_high	conf_low	decile	estimate	n	n_units	place
7.00	6.94	1	6.97	173,060	44	County deprivation
6.99	6.93	2	6.96	175,650	85	County deprivation
7.01	6.97	3	6.99	179,718	109	County deprivation
7.03	6.98	4	7.00	171,208	134	County deprivation
7.04	6.99	5	7.01	174,311	168	County deprivation
7.06	7.03	6	7.05	177,633	198	County deprivation
7.07	7.03	7	7.05	176,592	266	County deprivation
7.08	7.05	8	7.07	177,789	350	County deprivation
7.09	7.05	9	7.07	176,681	563	County deprivation
7.11	7.08	10	7.10	177,139	1,205	County deprivation
7.02	6.97	1	6.99	169,075	199	ZIP-area deprivation
7.01	6.97	2	6.99	172,355	337	ZIP-area deprivation
7.02	6.99	3	7.00	174,458	454	ZIP-area deprivation
7.02	6.99	4	7.01	174,430	607	ZIP-area deprivation
7.04	7.01	5	7.03	174,417	755	ZIP-area deprivation
7.04	7.01	6	7.03	174,768	954	ZIP-area deprivation
7.06	7.04	7	7.05	174,854	1,179	ZIP-area deprivation
7.06	7.04	8	7.05	174,142	1,432	ZIP-area deprivation
7.07	7.04	9	7.05	174,544	1,632	ZIP-area deprivation
7.08	7.05	10	7.06	174,290	1,781	ZIP-area deprivation

Table 2.3. Gap after each adjustment

The ladder gap between the most and least deprived county tenth narrows to −0.11 with education, turns to +0.13 with nominal household income and is −0.02 once county rent levels enter

Difference in mean ladder score, most deprived minus least deprived tenth of interviews, after successive comparisons within cells of respondent characteristics, 2009 to 2017

conf_high	conf_low	estimate	n	n_units	place	step
−0.205	−0.335	−0.270	350,199	1,249	County deprivation	No adjustment
−0.234	−0.360	−0.297	350,199	1,249	County deprivation	Same age and sex
−0.069	−0.151	−0.110	350,199	1,249	County deprivation	Plus education
−0.039	−0.134	−0.087	350,199	1,249	County deprivation	Plus race and ethnicity
0.157	0.099	0.128	350,199	1,249	County deprivation	Plus household income
0.004	−0.054	−0.025	350,199	1,249	County deprivation	Plus county rent level
−0.394	−0.499	−0.446	343,365	1,917	ZIP-area deprivation	No adjustment
−0.413	−0.515	−0.464	343,365	1,917	ZIP-area deprivation	Same age and sex
−0.166	−0.250	−0.208	343,365	1,917	ZIP-area deprivation	Plus education
−0.156	−0.243	−0.200	343,365	1,917	ZIP-area deprivation	Plus race and ethnicity
0.102	0.040	0.071	343,365	1,917	ZIP-area deprivation	Plus household income
−0.034	−0.092	−0.063	343,365	1,917	ZIP-area deprivation	Plus county rent level

Note: Gallup's extract has no survey weights, so every estimate is unweighted and levels can differ from the weighted figures Gallup publishes. County comes from the respondent's ZIP code and is approximate near county lines. The ladder is the evaluative measure and the feelings are experiential measures; they are never combined into one index.

Note: Deciles are cut once on every interview that has the deprivation measure, so each holds about a tenth of interviews and every item uses the same cut points. County deprivation is the mean of the tract Area Deprivation Index national ranks (1 = least deprived), weighted by tract population. The ZIP code is treated as the ZCTA of the same number, whose index is an area-weighted approximation; Connecticut has no ZCTAs in the project files and drops out of the ZIP-area line.

Note: The second and third tabs use one sample at every step, the interviews that report age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent. Education has three levels and ages above the oldest five-year band share it. Household income is in nominal dollars and does not reflect differences in the cost of living across counties; the top bracket has no upper limit.

Note: The rent step adds a quintile of the county's HUD two-bedroom Fair Market Rent for fiscal year 2025, which stands in for relative price levels in the interview years. Counties in a metro share the metro's rent. Where the rent is allowed for, the data cannot separate a place difference from a price difference.

Data: vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/figures/ladder_by_deprivation.json

Table 3. Physical pain is 8.8 percentage points more common in the most deprived tenth of counties, the largest gap of the seven feelings, and 1.8 at the same characteristics and 1.2 with county rent also allowed for

Difference in the share reporting each feeling a lot of the day yesterday, most deprived minus least deprived tenth of interviews by county deprivation, Gallup U.S. Daily 2008 to 2017

basis	conf_high	conf_low	estimate	feeling	n	n_units
As interviewed	−0.350	−2.10	−1.23	Enjoyment	525,461	1,250
Same age, sex, race, education and nominal income	2.16	0.990	1.58	Enjoyment	412,511	1,249
Plus county rent level	−0.090	−1.23	−0.660	Enjoyment	412,511	1,249
As interviewed	0.200	−1.41	−0.610	Happiness	493,755	1,250
Same age, sex, race, education and nominal income	2.43	1.17	1.76	Happiness	385,768	1,249
Plus county rent level	0.150	−1.09	−0.490	Happiness	385,768	1,249
As interviewed	0.190	−2.33	−1.07	Worry	526,425	1,250
Same age, sex, race, education and nominal income	−2.78	−4.62	−3.72	Worry	413,010	1,249
Plus county rent level	1.48	−0.400	0.520	Worry	413,010	1,249
As interviewed	−1.19	−3.08	−2.13	Stress	526,330	1,250
Same age, sex, race, education and nominal income	−1.58	−3	−2.33	Stress	412,916	1,249
Plus county rent level	1.18	−0.310	0.370	Stress	412,916	1,249
As interviewed	3.19	0.660	1.93	Sadness	494,753	1,250
Same age, sex, race, education and nominal income	−0.960	−2.40	−1.73	Sadness	386,323	1,249
Plus county rent level	1.25	−0.190	0.480	Sadness	386,323	1,249
As interviewed	0.250	−1.67	−0.710	Anger	421,120	1,250
Same age, sex, race, education and nominal income	−0.630	−1.87	−1.29	Anger	326,006	1,248
Plus county rent level	1.10	−0.230	0.400	Anger	326,006	1,248
As interviewed	9.68	7.87	8.77	Physical pain	526,330	1,250
Same age, sex, race, education and nominal income	2.26	1.38	1.81	Physical pain	412,916	1,249
Plus county rent level	1.70	0.820	1.23	Physical pain	412,916	1,249

Note: Each feeling is counted in the years its item was asked (see the table of items). The two adjusted dots use one sample, the interviews that report every characteristic and a county rent, so it is smaller. Deprivation is the county Area Deprivation Index, in deciles cut on all interviews. The rent is the FY2025 HUD two-bedroom Fair Market Rent of the county, a stand-in for relative price levels in 2008 to 2017.

Source: Gallup U.S. Daily, 2008-2017; unweighted, intervals clustered by county; Area Deprivation Index 2023 and ACS 2019-2023 tract population joined on the respondent's county or ZIP code

Data: vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/figures/feelings_by_deprivation.json

Table 4. The richest income bracket scores 0.68 standard deviations above the poorest on the ladder and −0.51 on physical pain, but only −0.12 on stress

Unweighted mean of each item in standard deviations of the item, by household income bracket, Gallup U.S. Daily interviews (ladder 2009 to 2017, feelings 2008 to 2017)

Item	Income bracket (1 = lowest)	Mean in standard deviations	Raw mean (ladder points or share reporting)	Respondents
Ladder now	1	−0.41	627.82	373,989
Ladder now	2	−0.19	670.23	241,269
Ladder now	3	−0.07	693.71	209,896
Ladder now	4	0.02	711.83	194,839
Ladder now	5	0.12	729.75	333,711
Ladder now	6	0.27	760.19	453,101
Enjoyment	1	−0.26	76.78	440,439
Enjoyment	2	−0.05	84.03	282,706
Enjoyment	3	0.02	86.46	247,271
Enjoyment	4	0.05	87.63	227,521
Enjoyment	5	0.09	88.86	390,056
Enjoyment	6	0.11	89.82	527,783
Worry	1	0.26	40.73	441,514
Worry	2	0.06	31.70	283,002
Worry	3	−0.01	28.55	247,491
Worry	4	−0.05	26.87	227,727
Worry	5	−0.07	25.75	390,212
Worry	6	−0.08	25.45	528,050
Stress	1	0.15	43.64	441,398
Stress	2	0.02	37.17	283,002
Stress	3	−0.01	35.66	247,449
Stress	4	−0.02	35.36	227,700
Stress	5	−0.01	35.77	390,164
Stress	6	0.03	37.67	528,004
Sadness	1	0.33	28.83	419,214
Sadness	2	0.07	19.08	266,659
Sadness	3	−0.02	15.85	235,369
Sadness	4	−0.07	13.85	214,543
Sadness	5	−0.12	12.12	363,770
Sadness	6	−0.15	10.83	479,863
Physical pain	1	0.32	37.82	441,363
Physical pain	2	0.10	28.12	282,945
Physical pain	3	0.01	24.35	247,422
Physical pain	4	−0.06	21.60	227,696
Physical pain	5	−0.12	19.07	390,175
Physical pain	6	−0.18	16.11	528,048

Note: Each item is scaled by its own mean and standard deviation over all respondents with the item, so the lines compare slopes, not levels, and the ladder is not combined with the feelings. Happiness and anger, asked in fewer years, are left out of this chart. The top bracket has no upper limit, so the chart cannot show whether an item flattens at higher incomes. Household income is reported for most but not all interviews, and brackets are in nominal dollars.

Source: Gallup U.S. Daily, ladder 2009-2017 and feelings 2008-2017; unweighted, intervals clustered by county; household income is the respondent's reported bracket

Data: vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/figures/income_gradient.json

Table 5. The income gradient of the ladder is nearly the same in all three bands of counties, 0.250 points per bracket across respondents and 0.251 within counties

Mean ladder score and share reporting physical pain by household income bracket, in three bands of county deprivation, Gallup U.S. Daily interviews (ladder 2009 to 2017, pain 2008 to 2017)

Table 5.1. Ladder score

Within each household income bracket, the ladder score differs by at most 0.12 points across three bands of county deprivation

Unweighted mean ladder score by household income bracket, in three bands of county deprivation (tenths 1 to 3, 4 to 7 and 8 to 10 of interviews), Gallup U.S. Daily 2009 to 2017

bracket	conf_high	conf_low	estimate	n	n_units	place
1	6.37	6.29	6.33	86,715	237	Least deprived three tenths of counties
2	6.72	6.67	6.69	58,576	236	Least deprived three tenths of counties
3	6.92	6.88	6.90	54,352	238	Least deprived three tenths of counties
4	7.08	7.03	7.06	54,434	236	Least deprived three tenths of counties
5	7.26	7.21	7.24	105,652	238	Least deprived three tenths of counties
6	7.60	7.57	7.58	183,790	237	Least deprived three tenths of counties
1	6.31	6.26	6.29	139,826	763	Middle four tenths
2	6.72	6.68	6.70	95,714	763	Middle four tenths
3	6.95	6.91	6.93	85,958	761	Middle four tenths
4	7.14	7.10	7.12	80,130	760	Middle four tenths
5	7.32	7.29	7.30	137,439	763	Middle four tenths
6	7.63	7.60	7.61	178,686	763	Middle four tenths
1	6.26	6.22	6.24	147,372	2,109	Most deprived three tenths
2	6.72	6.69	6.71	86,910	2,104	Most deprived three tenths
3	6.99	6.95	6.97	69,541	2,092	Most deprived three tenths
4	7.19	7.15	7.17	60,226	2,078	Most deprived three tenths
5	7.37	7.34	7.36	90,515	2,097	Most deprived three tenths
6	7.63	7.60	7.62	90,545	2,090	Most deprived three tenths

Table 5.2. Physical pain

In the poorest income bracket, physical pain is 6.6 percentage points more common in the most deprived three tenths of counties than in the least deprived three tenths, against 1.7 in the richest bracket

Unweighted share reporting physical pain a lot of the day yesterday by household income bracket, in three bands of county deprivation, Gallup U.S. Daily 2008 to 2017

bracket	conf_high	conf_low	estimate	n	n_units	place
1	35.02	33.38	34.20	102,306	237	Least deprived three tenths of counties
2	27.73	26.35	27.04	68,623	237	Least deprived three tenths of counties
3	24.53	23.38	23.95	64,124	238	Least deprived three tenths of counties
4	21.60	20.44	21.02	63,809	236	Least deprived three tenths of counties
5	19.54	18.78	19.16	124,159	238	Least deprived three tenths of counties
6	16.05	15.35	15.70	215,333	237	Least deprived three tenths of counties
1	37.55	36.26	36.91	164,464	763	Middle four tenths
2	28.16	27.20	27.68	112,141	763	Middle four tenths
3	24.53	23.68	24.11	101,201	762	Middle four tenths
4	21.77	20.97	21.37	93,670	761	Middle four tenths
5	19.13	18.50	18.82	160,630	763	Middle four tenths
6	16.22	15.58	15.90	207,669	764	Middle four tenths
1	41.26	40.34	40.80	174,503	2,111	Most deprived three tenths
2	29.71	28.98	29.34	102,096	2,106	Most deprived three tenths
3	25.30	24.64	24.97	82,038	2,096	Most deprived three tenths
4	22.77	22.09	22.43	70,157	2,088	Most deprived three tenths
5	19.64	19.06	19.35	105,265	2,098	Most deprived three tenths
6	17.65	17.08	17.37	104,953	2,096	Most deprived three tenths

Note: Bands cut the deprivation deciles into the least deprived three, the middle four and the most deprived three tenths of interviews by county Area Deprivation Index. The slopes are coefficients of the ladder score on the bracket number (1 to 6) with errors clustered on county; the second has county fixed effects. Brackets are not equal in dollar width.

Source: Gallup U.S. Daily, ladder 2009-2017 and feelings 2008-2017; unweighted, intervals clustered by county; Area Deprivation Index 2023 and ACS 2019-2023 tract population joined on the respondent's county or ZIP code

Data: vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/figures/income_within_places.json

Table 6. Across respondents the ladder correlates −0.28 with worry and +0.26 with enjoyment, and across county means it moves together with most feelings more tightly

Cantril ladder scores against feelings yesterday, by whether the respondent reported each feeling, and the correlation of the two across respondents and across county means

Table 6.1. Ladder by feeling reported

Respondents who reported happiness rated their lives 1.57 ladder points higher, and those who reported sadness rated them 1.33 lower

Unweighted mean ladder score of respondents who did and did not report each feeling a lot of the day yesterday, Gallup U.S. Daily (ladder 2009 to 2017, feelings 2008 to 2017)

feeling	group	n_no	n_yes	no	no_hi	no_lo	yes	yes_hi	yes_lo
Enjoyment	Positive feelings	310,895	1,900,405	5.82	5.84	5.80	7.28	7.29	7.27
Happiness	Positive feelings	230,060	1,821,129	5.67	5.69	5.65	7.24	7.25	7.23
Worry	Negative feelings	1,573,559	640,621	7.42	7.43	7.41	6.22	6.24	6.20
Stress	Negative feelings	1,407,513	806,482	7.43	7.44	7.43	6.44	6.46	6.42
Sadness	Negative feelings	1,713,579	341,114	7.29	7.29	7.28	5.95	5.97	5.93
Anger	Negative feelings	1,483,704	202,942	7.18	7.19	7.17	6.11	6.13	6.09
Physical pain	Negative feelings	1,677,403	536,374	7.29	7.30	7.28	6.38	6.39	6.37

Table 6.2. Correlations

The ladder correlates +0.26 with enjoyment across respondents and +0.59 across county means, and −0.20 with pain across respondents and −0.62 across county means

Correlation of the Cantril ladder score with each feeling, across respondents and across county means, Gallup U.S. Daily (ladder 2009 to 2017, feelings 2008 to 2017)

basis	conf_high	conf_low	estimate	feeling	n	n_units
Across respondents	0.262	0.258	0.260	Enjoyment	2,211,300	3,141
Across county means	0.630	0.558	0.595	Enjoyment	2,175,289	2,356
Across respondents	0.257	0.253	0.255	Happiness	2,051,189	3,140
Across county means	0.588	0.499	0.544	Happiness	2,175,189	2,355
Across respondents	−0.277	−0.282	−0.279	Worry	2,214,180	3,141
Across county means	−0.323	−0.436	−0.381	Worry	2,175,289	2,356
Across respondents	−0.244	−0.249	−0.247	Stress	2,213,995	3,141
Across county means	−0.138	−0.263	−0.201	Stress	2,175,289	2,356
Across respondents	−0.253	−0.257	−0.255	Sadness	2,054,693	3,140
Across county means	−0.528	−0.612	−0.572	Sadness	2,175,189	2,355
Across respondents	−0.178	−0.182	−0.180	Anger	1,686,646	3,139
Across county means	−0.279	−0.394	−0.337	Anger	2,169,173	2,298
Across respondents	−0.199	−0.204	−0.201	Physical pain	2,213,777	3,141
Across county means	−0.583	−0.662	−0.623	Physical pain	2,175,289	2,356

Note: The ladder and the feelings were asked of the same respondents, so the comparison uses interviews with both answers. County means need at least the county floor of respondents with each item. Anger is asked in fewer years than the other feelings (see the table of items).

Source: Gallup U.S. Daily, ladder 2009-2017 and feelings 2008-2017; unweighted, intervals clustered by county

Data: vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/figures/ladder_and_feelings.json

Table 7. Physical pain is the feeling most closely tied to the county deaths-of-despair rate under every weighting and comparison, with a correlation of +0.65 across counties

Feelings and life ratings of Gallup U.S. Daily respondents against the deaths-of-despair rate of their county (ladder 2009 to 2017, feelings 2008 to 2017)

Table 7.1. By fifth of the county rate

The share reporting physical pain rises from 20.2% to 26.8% across fifths of the county deaths-of-despair rate, while stress stays near 37.4%

Unweighted share reporting each feeling a lot of the day yesterday, by fifth of interviews ranked by the deaths-of-despair rate of the respondent's county, Gallup U.S. Daily 2008 to 2017

conf_high	conf_low	estimate	measure	n	n_units	quintile
20.55	19.78	20.16	Physical pain	465,440	150	1
22.69	21.60	22.15	Physical pain	466,441	190	2
24.28	23.45	23.86	Physical pain	474,417	278	3
25.77	24.80	25.28	Physical pain	470,320	277	4
27.32	26.27	26.80	Physical pain	474,232	446	5
16.44	15.29	15.86	Sadness	434,567	150	1
17.05	15.38	16.22	Sadness	436,885	190	2
16.51	15.98	16.25	Sadness	445,971	278	3
17.36	16.76	17.06	Sadness	442,076	277	4
17.72	17.18	17.45	Sadness	447,105	446	5
37.92	36.88	37.40	Stress	465,362	150	1
37.34	36.25	36.79	Stress	466,398	190	2
36.39	35.62	36	Stress	474,426	278	3
36.50	35.85	36.17	Stress	470,344	277	4
36.83	36.06	36.45	Stress	474,370	446	5

Table 7.2. Correlations across counties

Across counties, the share reporting pain correlates +0.65 with the deaths-of-despair rate, the highest of the feelings, and +0.43 once respondents are compared within cells

Correlation across counties between the county mean of each item and the county rate of deaths of despair (CDC, 2015, as compiled by the Joint Economic Committee), counties with enough respondents, Gallup U.S. Daily (ladder 2009 to 2017, feelings 2008 to 2017)

conf_high	conf_low	estimate	group	measure	n_units	respondents
0.691	0.615	0.654	Weighted by respondents	Physical pain	1,337	2350453
0.627	0.536	0.582	Each county once	Physical pain	1,337	2350453
0.480	0.380	0.433	Weighted, same age, sex, race, education and income	Physical pain	1,331	1844740
0.410	0.197	0.308	Weighted by respondents	Sadness	1,337	2206239
0.522	0.385	0.453	Each county once	Sadness	1,337	2206239
0.061	−0.118	−0.030	Weighted, same age, sex, race, education and income	Sadness	1,331	1722909
0.167	−0.046	0.059	Weighted by respondents	Worry	1,337	2350793
0.447	0.286	0.364	Each county once	Worry	1,337	2350793
−0.048	−0.213	−0.134	Weighted, same age, sex, race, education and income	Worry	1,331	1845031
0.113	−0.099	0.007	Weighted by respondents	Anger	1,337	1875987
0.331	0.158	0.244	Each county once	Anger	1,337	1875987
0.029	−0.145	−0.062	Weighted, same age, sex, race, education and income	Anger	1,331	1452370
−0.009	−0.169	−0.088	Weighted by respondents	Stress	1,337	2350501
0.282	0.110	0.194	Each county once	Stress	1,337	2350501
−0.001	−0.151	−0.077	Weighted, same age, sex, race, education and income	Stress	1,331	1844805
0.010	−0.221	−0.102	Weighted by respondents	Happiness	1,337	2202015
−0.249	−0.420	−0.332	Each county once	Happiness	1,337	2202015
0.272	0.104	0.192	Weighted, same age, sex, race, education and income	Happiness	1,331	1720588
−0.027	−0.245	−0.133	Weighted by respondents	Enjoyment	1,337	2347130
−0.272	−0.447	−0.358	Each county once	Enjoyment	1,337	2347130
0.230	0.062	0.149	Weighted, same age, sex, race, education and income	Enjoyment	1,331	1843168
−0.326	−0.475	−0.405	Weighted by respondents	Ladder now	1,337	1981094
−0.355	−0.481	−0.420	Each county once	Ladder now	1,337	1981094
0.217	0.067	0.143	Weighted, same age, sex, race, education and income	Ladder now	1,331	1570386
−0.488	−0.596	−0.542	Weighted by respondents	Ladder in five years	1,337	1900184
−0.391	−0.509	−0.452	Each county once	Ladder in five years	1,337	1900184
−0.045	−0.172	−0.108	Weighted, same age, sex, race, education and income	Ladder in five years	1,331	1522554

Note: The deaths-of-despair rate is a single 2015 cross-section covering the larger counties (suicide, alcohol and drug deaths, CDC multiple cause of death, compiled by the Joint Economic Committee). The file keeps it as a cross-check series and does not document its population base or age adjustment, so it is used here only to rank counties; the text checks it against CDC WONDER rates for 2018 to 2023. Fifths are cut on interviews in counties with a rate.

Note: County means need a floor of respondents with each item, and the same counties enter every dot. The third dot of each row compares respondents within cells of five-year age band, sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket before averaging to counties, so it uses interviews that report every characteristic.

Source: Gallup U.S. Daily, ladder 2009-2017 and feelings 2008-2017; unweighted, intervals clustered by county; county deaths of despair from the Joint Economic Committee compilation of CDC data for 2015

Data: vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/figures/felt_despair.json

Table 8. The ladder score is steadily worse toward the more deprived end under the ADI and under each of the three other rankings

Mean ladder score (0 to 10) by tenth of interviews, with the respondent's county ranked four ways, over the 3,121 counties that have all four rankings

bin	conf_high	conf_low	estimate	n_units	ranking
1	7.23	7.11	7.17	41	Area Deprivation Index
2	7.17	7.10	7.13	88	Area Deprivation Index
3	7.13	7.07	7.10	110	Area Deprivation Index
4	7.15	7.08	7.11	142	Area Deprivation Index
5	7.12	7.07	7.10	158	Area Deprivation Index
6	7.13	7.07	7.10	197	Area Deprivation Index
7	7.08	7.03	7.06	284	Area Deprivation Index
8	7.06	7.02	7.04	329	Area Deprivation Index
9	7.00	6.96	6.98	572	Area Deprivation Index
10	6.94	6.91	6.93	1,200	Area Deprivation Index
1	7.25	7.19	7.22	101	Standardized index
2	7.19	7.14	7.16	100	Standardized index
3	7.15	7.10	7.12	168	Standardized index
4	7.13	7.09	7.11	188	Standardized index
5	7.10	7.05	7.07	185	Standardized index
6	7.07	7.03	7.05	248	Standardized index
7	7.08	7.00	7.04	240	Standardized index
8	7.06	6.99	7.03	321	Standardized index
9	6.98	6.95	6.96	579	Standardized index
10	6.96	6.92	6.94	991	Standardized index
1	7.24	7.19	7.22	83	Median household income
2	7.18	7.12	7.15	95	Median household income
3	7.14	7.08	7.11	131	Median household income
4	7.12	7.05	7.09	130	Median household income
5	7.11	7.04	7.07	190	Median household income
6	7.11	7.04	7.07	201	Median household income
7	7.08	7.03	7.06	310	Median household income
8	7.06	7.01	7.03	348	Median household income
9	7.00	6.95	6.97	524	Median household income
10	6.95	6.92	6.94	1,109	Median household income
1	7.26	7.21	7.24	91	Bachelor's degree share
2	7.19	7.14	7.16	119	Bachelor's degree share
3	7.16	7.10	7.13	97	Bachelor's degree share
4	7.13	7.08	7.10	125	Bachelor's degree share
5	7.11	7.05	7.08	157	Bachelor's degree share
6	7.07	7.02	7.04	148	Bachelor's degree share
7	7.12	7.05	7.08	238	Bachelor's degree share
8	7.02	6.98	7.00	414	Bachelor's degree share
9	6.99	6.95	6.97	615	Bachelor's degree share
10	6.92	6.89	6.90	1,117	Bachelor's degree share

Note: Least and most deprived tenth: ADI 7.17 and 6.93, rank correlation −0.98; standardized index 7.22 and 6.94, −1.00; median household income 7.22 and 6.94, −1.00; bachelor's degree share 7.24 and 6.90, −0.96.

Note: The standardized index applies the ADI's coefficients to its measures after standardizing each one, so home value and income carry less weight than in the ADI. Income and degree share are single census measures, each ranked from the highest value to the lowest.

Source: Gallup U.S. Daily, ladder 2009-2017; unweighted, intervals clustered by county; Area Deprivation Index 2023 and ACS 2019-2023 tract population joined on the respondent's county or ZIP code; unweighted; ADI 2023 and ACS 2019-2023 tract tables (B19013, B15003 and the 15 rebuilt ADI measures)

Data: vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/figures/alt_rankings.json

All estimates

Every fact in facts.json (157), sorted by id. The same values as JSON: facts.json.

Fact id	Value	Unit	Estimand	Population	Period	Interval	n	Weights	Source	Note
age_q1	51.9	years of age	unweighted mean age, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the lowest fifth of interviews, ranked by the deaths-of-despair rate of the respondent's county	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 51.3 to 52.5	617,488 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
age_q5	55.5	years of age	unweighted mean age, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the highest fifth of interviews, ranked by the deaths-of-despair rate of the respondent's county	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 55.1 to 56.0	619,036 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
alt_adi_least	7.17	Mean ladder score (0 to 10)	unweighted mean ladder score; 95% intervals clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the least deprived tenth of interviews, with the respondent's county ranked by Area Deprivation Index, among interviews whose county has all four rankings	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 7.11 to 7.23	41 counties	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
alt_adi_most	6.93	Mean ladder score (0 to 10)	unweighted mean ladder score; 95% intervals clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the most deprived tenth of interviews, with the respondent's county ranked by Area Deprivation Index, among interviews whose county has all four rankings	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 6.91 to 6.94	1,200 counties	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
alt_adi_rho	−0.98	rank correlation	Spearman rank correlation between bin order and bin mean, each bin counted once	the tenths of interviews, with the respondent's county ranked by Area Deprivation Index	interviews in 2009 to 2017			each bin counted once	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
alt_degree_least	7.24	Mean ladder score (0 to 10)	unweighted mean ladder score; 95% intervals clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the least deprived tenth of interviews, with the respondent's county ranked by Bachelor's degree share, among interviews whose county has all four rankings	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 7.21 to 7.26	91 counties	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
alt_degree_most	6.90	Mean ladder score (0 to 10)	unweighted mean ladder score; 95% intervals clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the most deprived tenth of interviews, with the respondent's county ranked by Bachelor's degree share, among interviews whose county has all four rankings	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 6.89 to 6.92	1,117 counties	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
alt_degree_rho	−0.96	rank correlation	Spearman rank correlation between bin order and bin mean, each bin counted once	the tenths of interviews, with the respondent's county ranked by Bachelor's degree share	interviews in 2009 to 2017			each bin counted once	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
alt_income_least	7.22	Mean ladder score (0 to 10)	unweighted mean ladder score; 95% intervals clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the least deprived tenth of interviews, with the respondent's county ranked by Median household income, among interviews whose county has all four rankings	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 7.19 to 7.24	83 counties	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
alt_income_most	6.94	Mean ladder score (0 to 10)	unweighted mean ladder score; 95% intervals clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the most deprived tenth of interviews, with the respondent's county ranked by Median household income, among interviews whose county has all four rankings	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 6.92 to 6.95	1,109 counties	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
alt_income_rho	−1.00	rank correlation	Spearman rank correlation between bin order and bin mean, each bin counted once	the tenths of interviews, with the respondent's county ranked by Median household income	interviews in 2009 to 2017			each bin counted once	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
alt_n_places	3,121	counties	count of counties in the common sample of the ranking comparison	counties with the outcome and all four rankings	interviews in 2009 to 2017			none (full count)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
alt_rho_cut	0.9	absolute rank correlation	threshold between a steady and an uneven gradient	the rule for changed gradients (docs/RANKING_SWITCH_RULE.md)	interviews in 2009 to 2017			none (a fixed rule)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
alt_rho_margin	0.1	absolute rank correlation	smallest move in the rank correlation that counts as a change of shape	the rule for changed gradients (docs/RANKING_SWITCH_RULE.md)	interviews in 2009 to 2017			none (a fixed rule)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
alt_std_least	7.22	Mean ladder score (0 to 10)	unweighted mean ladder score; 95% intervals clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the least deprived tenth of interviews, with the respondent's county ranked by Standardized index, among interviews whose county has all four rankings	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 7.19 to 7.25	101 counties	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
alt_std_most	6.94	Mean ladder score (0 to 10)	unweighted mean ladder score; 95% intervals clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the most deprived tenth of interviews, with the respondent's county ranked by Standardized index, among interviews whose county has all four rankings	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 6.92 to 6.96	991 counties	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
alt_std_rho	−1.00	rank correlation	Spearman rank correlation between bin order and bin mean, each bin counted once	the tenths of interviews, with the respondent's county ranked by Standardized index	interviews in 2009 to 2017			each bin counted once	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
county_floor	100	respondents	minimum number of respondents with an item for a county mean to enter (a definition of the sample)	counties in the county-level correlations	interviews: ladder 2009 to 2017, feelings 2008 to 2017			none (definition)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
expected_inc1	6.98	expected ladder score (0 worst possible life, 10 best possible life)	unweighted mean of the ladder score the respondent expects to have in the future, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the poorest household income bracket with an expected ladder score	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 6.95 to 7.02	348,488 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
expected_inc6	8.11	expected ladder score (0 worst possible life, 10 best possible life)	unweighted mean of the ladder score the respondent expects to have in the future, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the richest household income bracket with an expected ladder score	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 8.10 to 8.12	446,942 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
gap_adj_anger	−1.3	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the same difference after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent and an answer to the anger item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI −1.9 to −0.6	326,006 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
gap_adj_enjoyment	1.6	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the same difference after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent and an answer to the enjoyment item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI 1.0 to 2.2	412,511 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
gap_adj_happiness_yest	1.8	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the same difference after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent and an answer to the happiness item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI 1.2 to 2.4	385,768 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
gap_adj_physical_pain	1.8	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the same difference after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent and an answer to the physical pain item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI 1.4 to 2.3	412,916 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
gap_adj_sadness	−1.7	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the same difference after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent and an answer to the sadness item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI −2.4 to −1.0	386,323 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
gap_adj_stress	−2.3	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the same difference after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent and an answer to the stress item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI −3.0 to −1.6	412,916 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
gap_adj_worry	−3.7	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the same difference after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent and an answer to the worry item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI −4.6 to −2.8	413,010 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
gap_anger	−0.7	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	difference between the unweighted shares reporting the feeling a lot of the day yesterday in the most and the least deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by county ADI, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with an answer to the anger item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI −1.7 to 0.3	421,120 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
gap_enjoyment	−1.2	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	difference between the unweighted shares reporting the feeling a lot of the day yesterday in the most and the least deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by county ADI, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with an answer to the enjoyment item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI −2.1 to −0.4	525,461 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
gap_happiness_yest	−0.6	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	difference between the unweighted shares reporting the feeling a lot of the day yesterday in the most and the least deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by county ADI, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with an answer to the happiness item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI −1.4 to 0.2	493,755 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
gap_physical_pain	8.8	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	difference between the unweighted shares reporting the feeling a lot of the day yesterday in the most and the least deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by county ADI, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with an answer to the physical pain item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI 7.9 to 9.7	526,330 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
gap_rent_anger	0.4	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the same difference after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket and a quintile of county rent, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income, a county rent and an answer to the anger item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI −0.2 to 1.1	326,006 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents
gap_rent_enjoyment	−0.7	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the same difference after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket and a quintile of county rent, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income, a county rent and an answer to the enjoyment item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI −1.2 to −0.1	412,511 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents
gap_rent_happiness_yest	−0.5	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the same difference after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket and a quintile of county rent, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income, a county rent and an answer to the happiness item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI −1.1 to 0.2	385,768 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents
gap_rent_physical_pain	1.2	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the same difference after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket and a quintile of county rent, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income, a county rent and an answer to the physical pain item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI 0.8 to 1.7	412,916 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents
gap_rent_sadness	0.5	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the same difference after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket and a quintile of county rent, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income, a county rent and an answer to the sadness item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI −0.2 to 1.2	386,323 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents
gap_rent_stress	0.4	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the same difference after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket and a quintile of county rent, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income, a county rent and an answer to the stress item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI −0.3 to 1.2	412,916 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents
gap_rent_worry	0.5	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the same difference after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket and a quintile of county rent, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income, a county rent and an answer to the worry item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI −0.4 to 1.5	413,010 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents
gap_sadness	1.9	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	difference between the unweighted shares reporting the feeling a lot of the day yesterday in the most and the least deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by county ADI, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with an answer to the sadness item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI 0.7 to 3.2	494,753 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
gap_stress	−2.1	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	difference between the unweighted shares reporting the feeling a lot of the day yesterday in the most and the least deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by county ADI, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with an answer to the stress item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI −3.1 to −1.2	526,330 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
gap_worry	−1.1	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	difference between the unweighted shares reporting the feeling a lot of the day yesterday in the most and the least deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by county ADI, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with an answer to the worry item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years the item was asked	95% CI −2.3 to 0.2	526,425 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
gap_zip_physical_pain	11.0	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	difference between the unweighted shares reporting physical pain in the most and the least deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by ZIP-area ADI, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with an answer to the pain item in the two extreme ZIP-area tenths	interviews 2008 to 2017	95% CI 10.3 to 11.7	513,469 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
icc_ladder	0.51%	percent of the variance of the ladder score	intraclass correlation of the ladder score by county (one-way ANOVA estimator), bootstrap over counties	interviews with a ladder score and a county	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 0.46% to 0.56%	3,141 counties	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
inc_gap_enjoyment	0.37	standard deviations, richest bracket minus poorest bracket	difference between the unweighted means of the item in the richest and the poorest household income bracket, in standard deviations of the item over all respondents, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with a household income bracket and an answer to the enjoyment item, in the poorest and the richest bracket	interviews in 2008 to 2017	95% CI 0.37 to 0.38	968,222 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
inc_gap_ladder	0.68	standard deviations, richest bracket minus poorest bracket	difference between the unweighted means of the item in the richest and the poorest household income bracket, in standard deviations of the item over all respondents, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with a household income bracket and an answer to the ladder score item, in the poorest and the richest bracket	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 0.67 to 0.69	827,090 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
inc_gap_physical_pain	−0.51	standard deviations, richest bracket minus poorest bracket	difference between the unweighted means of the item in the richest and the poorest household income bracket, in standard deviations of the item over all respondents, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with a household income bracket and an answer to the physical pain item, in the poorest and the richest bracket	interviews in 2008 to 2017	95% CI −0.52 to −0.50	969,411 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
inc_gap_sadness	−0.48	standard deviations, richest bracket minus poorest bracket	difference between the unweighted means of the item in the richest and the poorest household income bracket, in standard deviations of the item over all respondents, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with a household income bracket and an answer to the sadness item, in the poorest and the richest bracket	interviews in 2008 to 2017	95% CI −0.49 to −0.48	899,077 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
inc_gap_stress	−0.12	standard deviations, richest bracket minus poorest bracket	difference between the unweighted means of the item in the richest and the poorest household income bracket, in standard deviations of the item over all respondents, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with a household income bracket and an answer to the stress item, in the poorest and the richest bracket	interviews in 2008 to 2017	95% CI −0.13 to −0.11	969,402 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
inc_gap_worry	−0.34	standard deviations, richest bracket minus poorest bracket	difference between the unweighted means of the item in the richest and the poorest household income bracket, in standard deviations of the item over all respondents, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with a household income bracket and an answer to the worry item, in the poorest and the richest bracket	interviews in 2008 to 2017	95% CI −0.35 to −0.33	969,564 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
income_top_cut	$90,000	dollars of annual household income	the lower limit of the top household income bracket (a definition of the bracket)	the richest household income bracket in the Gallup extract (this amount and over)	interviews in 2008 to 2017			none (definition)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
kd_threshold	$75,000	dollars of annual household income	annual income above which a measure of emotional well-being stopped rising with log income in Kahneman and Deaton (2010); copied from the paper	respondents in the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index analyzed by Kahneman and Deaton	2008 to 2009			as in the paper	Published estimates from cited studies	A published figure from the paper, not a result of this build.
kw_threshold	$100,000	dollars of annual household income	annual income above which well-being flattened for an unhappy minority in Killingsworth, Kahneman and Mellers (2023); copied from the paper	the unhappiest fifth of respondents in the experience-sampling data analyzed by Killingsworth, Kahneman and Mellers	2009 to 2022			as in the paper	Published estimates from cited studies	A published figure from the paper, not a result of this build.
ladder_adj_d10_county	7.10	Cantril ladder score (0 worst possible life, 10 best possible life)	mean ladder score after subtracting the mean of the respondent's cell (five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket) and adding the grand mean, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the most deprived tenth of interviews by county deprivation	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 7.08 to 7.11	177,139 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_adj_d1_county	6.97	Cantril ladder score (0 worst possible life, 10 best possible life)	mean ladder score after subtracting the mean of the respondent's cell (five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket) and adding the grand mean, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the least deprived tenth of interviews by county deprivation	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 6.94 to 7.00	173,060 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_d10_county	6.93	Cantril ladder score (0 worst possible life, 10 best possible life)	unweighted mean ladder score in a tenth of interviews ranked by the deprivation of the respondent's county (county ADI is the mean of its tracts' ADI 2023 national ranks weighted by 2019-2023 tract population), interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the most deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by the Area Deprivation Index of the respondent's county	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 6.91 to 6.94	223,260 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_d10_zip	6.87	Cantril ladder score (0 worst possible life, 10 best possible life)	unweighted mean ladder score in a tenth of interviews ranked by the deprivation of the respondent's ZIP area (ZIP-area ADI is the 2023 national rank of the ZCTA with the ZIP code's number, an area-weighted approximation), interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the most deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by the Area Deprivation Index of the respondent's ZIP area	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 6.85 to 6.88	217,263 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_d1_county	7.17	Cantril ladder score (0 worst possible life, 10 best possible life)	unweighted mean ladder score in a tenth of interviews ranked by the deprivation of the respondent's county (county ADI is the mean of its tracts' ADI 2023 national ranks weighted by 2019-2023 tract population), interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the least deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by the Area Deprivation Index of the respondent's county	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 7.11 to 7.23	218,776 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_d1_zip	7.29	Cantril ladder score (0 worst possible life, 10 best possible life)	unweighted mean ladder score in a tenth of interviews ranked by the deprivation of the respondent's ZIP area (ZIP-area ADI is the 2023 national rank of the ZCTA with the ZIP code's number, an area-weighted approximation), interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the least deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by the Area Deprivation Index of the respondent's ZIP area	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 7.24 to 7.34	213,516 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_drop_county	0.24	ladder points, least deprived tenth minus most deprived tenth	difference between the unweighted mean ladder scores of the least and the most deprived tenth (county ADI is the mean of its tracts' ADI 2023 national ranks weighted by 2019-2023 tract population), interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the two extreme tenths of interviews, ranked by the Area Deprivation Index of the respondent's county	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 0.18 to 0.31	442,036 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_drop_county_with08	0.26	ladder points, least deprived tenth minus most deprived tenth	the county drop of the chapter's main comparison recomputed with the 2008 ladder answers left in, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the two extreme tenths of interviews, ranked by the Area Deprivation Index of the respondent's county, including 2008	interviews in 2008 to 2017 including the 2008 ladder, which carries a question-order artifact	95% CI 0.19 to 0.33	513,776 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_drop_zip	0.42	ladder points, least deprived tenth minus most deprived tenth	difference between the unweighted mean ladder scores of the least and the most deprived tenth (ZIP-area ADI is the 2023 national rank of the ZCTA with the ZIP code's number, an area-weighted approximation), interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the two extreme tenths of interviews, ranked by the Area Deprivation Index of the respondent's ZIP area	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 0.37 to 0.48	430,779 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_gap_adj_county	0.13	ladder points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	gap between the extreme tenths after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 0.10 to 0.16	350,199 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_gap_adj_county_with08	+0.12	ladder points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the nominal-income gap of the chapter's main comparison recomputed with the 2008 ladder answers left in, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the two extreme county tenths, including 2008	interviews in 2008 to 2017 including the 2008 ladder, which carries a question-order artifact	95% CI 0.09 to 0.15	403,911 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_gap_adj_zip	0.07	ladder points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	gap between the extreme tenths after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the two extreme ZIP area tenths	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 0.04 to 0.10	343,365 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_gap_edu6	0.13	ladder points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the nominal-income gap with the six-level education item in the cells in place of the three-level one, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, six-level education, household income and a county rent in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 0.10 to 0.16	350,199 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_gap_eqc	+0.02	ladder points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	gap between the extreme tenths after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, with each county counted once (counties with at least the survey floor of interviews with the item), bootstrap over counties	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI −0.03 to 0.07	347,376 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_gap_lnrent	−0.04	ladder points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	gap between the extreme tenths after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, with the logarithm of county rent also a linear control, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI −0.07 to −0.01	350,199 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents
ladder_gap_rentq	−0.02	ladder points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	gap between the extreme tenths after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, with a quintile of county rent also in the cells, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI −0.05 to 0.00	350,199 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents
ladder_gap_rentq_with08	−0.03	ladder points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the rent-quintile gap of the chapter's main comparison recomputed with the 2008 ladder answers left in, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the two extreme county tenths, including 2008	interviews in 2008 to 2017 including the 2008 ladder, which carries a question-order artifact	95% CI −0.06 to 0.00	403,911 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents
ladder_gap_rentq_zip	−0.06	ladder points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	gap between the extreme ZIP-area tenths after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket and a quintile of county rent, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the two extreme ZIP-area tenths	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI −0.09 to −0.03	343,365 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents
ladder_inc1	6.28	Cantril ladder score (0 worst possible life, 10 best possible life)	unweighted mean ladder score, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the poorest household income bracket	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 6.26 to 6.29	373,989 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_inc6	7.60	Cantril ladder score (0 worst possible life, 10 best possible life)	unweighted mean ladder score, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the richest household income bracket	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 7.59 to 7.61	453,101 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_q1	7.15	Cantril ladder score (0 worst possible life, 10 best possible life)	unweighted mean ladder score, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the lowest fifth of interviews, ranked by the deaths-of-despair rate of the respondent's county	interviews 2009 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 7.12 to 7.18	392,393 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_q5	7.00	Cantril ladder score (0 worst possible life, 10 best possible life)	unweighted mean ladder score, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the highest fifth of interviews, ranked by the deaths-of-despair rate of the respondent's county	interviews 2009 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 6.98 to 7.02	399,284 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_share_2009	85%	percent of the year's interviews that carry a ladder score	share of the year's interviews with a ladder score (unweighted count)	interviews with a county in 2009	2009		353,849 respondents	none (unweighted count)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
ladder_share_late	49%	percent of interviews that carry a ladder score	share of interviews with a ladder score (unweighted count)	interviews with a county from 2013 to 2017	2013 to 2017		1,750,460 respondents	none (unweighted count)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
lf_enjoy	1.46	ladder points higher among respondents who reported the feeling	difference between the unweighted mean ladder scores of respondents who did and did not report the feeling a lot of the day yesterday, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with a ladder score and an answer to the enjoyment item	interviews in the years the ladder (2009 to 2017) and the feeling were both asked	95% CI 1.44 to 1.47	2,211,300 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
lf_happy	1.57	ladder points higher among respondents who reported the feeling	difference between the unweighted mean ladder scores of respondents who did and did not report the feeling a lot of the day yesterday, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with a ladder score and an answer to the happiness item	interviews in the years the ladder (2009 to 2017) and the feeling were both asked	95% CI 1.55 to 1.59	2,051,189 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
lf_pain	0.91	ladder points lower among respondents who reported the feeling	difference between the unweighted mean ladder scores of respondents who did and did not report the feeling a lot of the day yesterday, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with a ladder score and an answer to the physical pain item	interviews in the years the ladder (2009 to 2017) and the feeling were both asked	95% CI 0.90 to 0.93	2,213,777 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
lf_sad	1.33	ladder points lower among respondents who reported the feeling	difference between the unweighted mean ladder scores of respondents who did and did not report the feeling a lot of the day yesterday, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with a ladder score and an answer to the sadness item	interviews in the years the ladder (2009 to 2017) and the feeling were both asked	95% CI 1.32 to 1.35	2,054,693 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
mto_swb	0.098	standard deviations of a three-point happiness question	intention-to-treat effect of the offer to move to a less disadvantaged area on a standardized answer to 'how would you say things are these days: very happy, pretty happy, not too happy' in the Moving to Opportunity experiment (Ludwig and coauthors 2012); the estimate and standard error (0.039) are copied from the paper and the interval is the estimate plus or minus 1.96 standard errors	low-income adults in public housing in five cities (Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York) who were offered a housing voucher to move to a lower-poverty neighborhood or an unrestricted voucher, or stayed, by random assignment	long-term follow-up survey, 10 to 15 years after random assignment	95% CI 0.022 to 0.174		as in the paper	Published estimates from cited studies	A published estimate for the study's adult sample, not a result of this build.
n_cell_sample	1,759,964	interviews	count of interviews in the one sample used for every comparison within cells (the cell means come from these interviews at every step)	interviews with a county, a ladder score, an age, a sex, a race, an education level, a household income bracket and a county rent	interviews in 2009 to 2017			none (unweighted count)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
n_counties	3,142	counties	count of distinct county codes assigned to respondents (derived from the ZIP code)	counties of the interviews in the analysis	2008 to 2017			none (unweighted count)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
n_counties_d1	45	counties	count of distinct counties among the interviews in the tenth (a tenth holds about a tenth of interviews, not of counties)	counties of the interviews in the least deprived tenth of interviews by county deprivation	interviews in 2009 to 2017			none (unweighted count)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
n_counties_d10	1,205	counties	count of distinct counties among the interviews in the tenth (a tenth holds about a tenth of interviews, not of counties)	counties of the interviews in the most deprived tenth of interviews by county deprivation	interviews in 2009 to 2017			none (unweighted count)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
n_despair_counties	1,337	counties	count of counties in the correlations with the deaths-of-despair rate	counties with a deaths-of-despair rate and at least 100 respondents with each item	interviews: ladder 2009 to 2017, feelings 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015			none (full count)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
n_interviews	3,519,539	interviews	count of interviews with a county code (derived from the ZIP code); the others are dropped	interviews with a county	2008 to 2017			none (unweighted count)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
n_interviews_all	3,530,270	interviews	count of interviews in the extract (unweighted)	all interviews in the Gallup U.S. Daily extract	2008 to 2017			none (unweighted count)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
n_ladder	2,217,485	interviews	count of interviews with a ladder score	interviews with a county and a ladder score	interviews in 2009 to 2017			none (unweighted count)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
n_no_county	10,731	interviews	count of interviews dropped because the extract has no county for them	interviews with no county code	2008 to 2017			none (unweighted count)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
n_no_county_adi	784	interviews	count of interviews left out of the county deprivation comparisons because the county has no index or is a split county	interviews with a county whose county has no Area Deprivation Index	ADI 2023			none (unweighted count)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
n_wonder_counties	534	counties	count of counties whose drug, alcohol and suicide counts are published in every year 2018 to 2023 (complete counties, as in the chapter on overdose, alcohol and suicide) and that have a JEC rate and enough respondents	counties with a JEC rate, a complete WONDER rate and at least 100 respondents with each of the ladder, pain and stress items	interviews: ladder 2009 to 2017, feelings 2008 to 2017; JEC deaths of despair 2015; WONDER deaths 2018 to 2023			none (full count)	CDC WONDER underlying cause of death
other_gap_max	2.1	percentage points (absolute value)	the largest absolute difference between the most and the least deprived county tenth among the six feelings other than physical pain	respondents in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in the years each item was asked			none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
pain_d10_county	29.6%	percent reporting physical pain a lot of the day yesterday	unweighted share in a tenth of interviews ranked by county ADI, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the most deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by the Area Deprivation Index of the respondent's county	interviews 2008 to 2017	95% CI 29.2% to 30.0%	264,787 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
pain_d1_county	20.8%	percent reporting physical pain a lot of the day yesterday	unweighted share in a tenth of interviews ranked by county ADI, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the least deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by the Area Deprivation Index of the respondent's county	interviews 2008 to 2017	95% CI 20.0% to 21.7%	261,543 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
pain_gap_eqc	1.7	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the pain gap after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, with each county counted once (counties with at least the survey floor of interviews with the item), bootstrap over counties	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income, a county rent and an answer to the pain item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews 2008 to 2017	95% CI 1.1 to 2.3	410,598 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
pain_gap_explained	80%	percent of the raw gap	share of the gap in the pain share between the extreme county tenths that disappears when respondents are compared within cells, bootstrap over counties with shared draws	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent and an answer to the pain item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews 2008 to 2017	95% CI 77% to 84%	412,916 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
pain_gap_lnrent	1.1	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the pain gap after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, with the logarithm of county rent also a linear control, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income, a county rent and an answer to the pain item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews 2008 to 2017	95% CI 0.6 to 1.5	412,916 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents
pain_gap_rentq	1.2	percentage points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	the pain gap after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, with a quintile of county rent also in the cells, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income, a county rent and an answer to the pain item in the two extreme county tenths	interviews 2008 to 2017	95% CI 0.8 to 1.7	412,916 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents
pain_inc1	37.8%	percent reporting physical pain a lot of the day yesterday	unweighted share, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the poorest household income bracket	interviews in 2008 to 2017	95% CI 37.4% to 38.3%	441,363 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
pain_inc6	16.1%	percent reporting physical pain a lot of the day yesterday	unweighted share, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the richest household income bracket	interviews in 2008 to 2017	95% CI 15.9% to 16.3%	528,048 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
pain_q1	20.2%	percent reporting physical pain a lot of the day yesterday	unweighted share, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the lowest fifth of interviews, ranked by the deaths-of-despair rate of the respondent's county	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 19.8% to 20.6%	465,440 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
pain_q5	26.8%	percent reporting physical pain a lot of the day yesterday	unweighted share, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the highest fifth of interviews, ranked by the deaths-of-despair rate of the respondent's county	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 26.3% to 27.3%	474,232 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
pain_q_gap	6.6	percentage points, highest fifth minus lowest fifth	difference between the unweighted shares reporting physical pain, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the two extreme fifths of interviews by county deaths-of-despair rate	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 6.0 to 7.3	939,672 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
place_spread_ladder	0.12	ladder points (largest spread over the six brackets)	largest, over the six household income brackets, of the difference between the highest and the lowest of the three band means	respondents in each household income bracket, in the least, middle and most deprived county bands	interviews in 2009 to 2017			none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
placegap_ladder_inc1	−0.09	ladder points, most deprived three tenths minus least deprived three tenths	difference between the unweighted means (shares for pain) in the most and the least deprived band of counties (tenths 8 to 10 and 1 to 3 of interviews by county ADI), interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the poorest household income bracket, in the two extreme county bands	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI −0.13 to −0.05	234,087 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
placegap_ladder_inc6	0.03	ladder points, most deprived three tenths minus least deprived three tenths	difference between the unweighted means (shares for pain) in the most and the least deprived band of counties (tenths 8 to 10 and 1 to 3 of interviews by county ADI), interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the richest household income bracket, in the two extreme county bands	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 0.01 to 0.05	274,335 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
placegap_pain_inc1	6.6	percentage points, most deprived three tenths minus least deprived three tenths	difference between the unweighted means (shares for pain) in the most and the least deprived band of counties (tenths 8 to 10 and 1 to 3 of interviews by county ADI), interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the poorest household income bracket, in the two extreme county bands	interviews in 2008 to 2017	95% CI 5.7 to 7.5	276,809 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
placegap_pain_inc6	1.7	percentage points, most deprived three tenths minus least deprived three tenths	difference between the unweighted means (shares for pain) in the most and the least deprived band of counties (tenths 8 to 10 and 1 to 3 of interviews by county ADI), interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the richest household income bracket, in the two extreme county bands	interviews in 2008 to 2017	95% CI 1.2 to 2.1	320,286 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_county_enjoy	+0.59	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean ladder score and the county share reporting the feeling, counties weighted by their respondents, bootstrap over counties	counties with at least 100 respondents with a ladder score and an answer to the enjoyment item	interviews in the years the ladder (2009 to 2017) and the feeling were both asked	95% CI 0.56 to 0.63	2,356 counties	respondents with the item in each county	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_county_pain	−0.62	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean ladder score and the county share reporting the feeling, counties weighted by their respondents, bootstrap over counties	counties with at least 100 respondents with a ladder score and an answer to the physical pain item	interviews in the years the ladder (2009 to 2017) and the feeling were both asked	95% CI −0.66 to −0.58	2,356 counties	respondents with the item in each county	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_county_sad	−0.57	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean ladder score and the county share reporting the feeling, counties weighted by their respondents, bootstrap over counties	counties with at least 100 respondents with a ladder score and an answer to the sadness item	interviews in the years the ladder (2009 to 2017) and the feeling were both asked	95% CI −0.61 to −0.53	2,355 counties	respondents with the item in each county	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_county_stress	−0.20	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean ladder score and the county share reporting the feeling, counties weighted by their respondents, bootstrap over counties	counties with at least 100 respondents with a ladder score and an answer to the stress item	interviews in the years the ladder (2009 to 2017) and the feeling were both asked	95% CI −0.26 to −0.14	2,356 counties	respondents with the item in each county	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_des_ladder	−0.40	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean of the item and the JEC county rate of deaths of despair (CDC multiple cause of death, 2015), counties weighted by their respondents with the item, bootstrap over counties	counties with a deaths-of-despair rate and at least 100 respondents with each item	interviews 2009 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI −0.47 to −0.33	1,337 counties	respondents with the item in each county	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_des_ladder5	−0.54	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean of the item and the JEC county rate of deaths of despair (CDC multiple cause of death, 2015), counties weighted by their respondents with the item, bootstrap over counties	counties with a deaths-of-despair rate and at least 100 respondents with each item	interviews 2009 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI −0.60 to −0.49	1,337 counties	respondents with the item in each county	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_des_ladder_adj	+0.14	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean of the cell-adjusted item (five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket) and the JEC county rate of deaths of despair, counties weighted by their respondents, bootstrap over counties	counties with a deaths-of-despair rate and at least 100 respondents with each item (respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent)	interviews 2009 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 0.07 to 0.22	1,331 counties	respondents with the item in each county	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_des_ladder_agesex	−0.47	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean ladder score after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band and sex and the JEC county rate of deaths of despair, counties weighted by their respondents, bootstrap over counties	counties with a deaths-of-despair rate and at least 100 respondents with each item (respondents with age and sex)	interviews 2009 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI −0.53 to −0.40	1,331 counties	respondents with the item in each county	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_des_pain	+0.65	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean of the item and the JEC county rate of deaths of despair (CDC multiple cause of death, 2015), counties weighted by their respondents with the item, bootstrap over counties	counties with a deaths-of-despair rate and at least 100 respondents with each item	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 0.61 to 0.69	1,337 counties	respondents with the item in each county	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_des_pain_adj	+0.43	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean of the cell-adjusted item (five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket) and the JEC county rate of deaths of despair, counties weighted by their respondents, bootstrap over counties	counties with a deaths-of-despair rate and at least 100 respondents with each item (respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent)	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 0.38 to 0.48	1,331 counties	respondents with the item in each county	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_des_pain_agesex	+0.62	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean of the item after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band and sex and the JEC county rate of deaths of despair, counties weighted by their respondents, bootstrap over counties	counties with a deaths-of-despair rate and at least 100 respondents with each item (respondents with age and sex)	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 0.58 to 0.66	1,331 counties	respondents with the item in each county	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_des_pain_unw	+0.58	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean of the item and the JEC county rate of deaths of despair (CDC multiple cause of death, 2015), each county counted once, bootstrap over counties	counties with a deaths-of-despair rate and at least 100 respondents with each item	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 0.54 to 0.63	1,337 counties	none (each county counts once)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_des_sad	+0.31	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean of the item and the JEC county rate of deaths of despair (CDC multiple cause of death, 2015), counties weighted by their respondents with the item, bootstrap over counties	counties with a deaths-of-despair rate and at least 100 respondents with each item	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 0.20 to 0.41	1,337 counties	respondents with the item in each county	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_des_sad_unw	+0.45	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean of the item and the JEC county rate of deaths of despair (CDC multiple cause of death, 2015), each county counted once, bootstrap over counties	counties with a deaths-of-despair rate and at least 100 respondents with each item	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 0.39 to 0.52	1,337 counties	none (each county counts once)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_des_stress	−0.09	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean of the item and the JEC county rate of deaths of despair (CDC multiple cause of death, 2015), counties weighted by their respondents with the item, bootstrap over counties	counties with a deaths-of-despair rate and at least 100 respondents with each item	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI −0.17 to −0.01	1,337 counties	respondents with the item in each county	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_des_stress_unw	+0.19	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean of the item and the JEC county rate of deaths of despair (CDC multiple cause of death, 2015), each county counted once, bootstrap over counties	counties with a deaths-of-despair rate and at least 100 respondents with each item	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 0.11 to 0.28	1,337 counties	none (each county counts once)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_des_worry	+0.06	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean of the item and the JEC county rate of deaths of despair (CDC multiple cause of death, 2015), counties weighted by their respondents with the item, bootstrap over counties	counties with a deaths-of-despair rate and at least 100 respondents with each item	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI −0.05 to 0.17	1,337 counties	respondents with the item in each county	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_des_worry_unw	+0.36	correlation coefficient	correlation across counties between the county mean of the item and the JEC county rate of deaths of despair (CDC multiple cause of death, 2015), each county counted once, bootstrap over counties	counties with a deaths-of-despair rate and at least 100 respondents with each item	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 0.29 to 0.45	1,337 counties	none (each county counts once)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_jec_wonder	+0.81	correlation coefficient	correlation across these counties between the JEC 2015 rate of deaths of despair and the WONDER rate, counties weighted by their respondents with the pain item, bootstrap over counties; the WONDER rate is the sum of the county crude rates of drug, alcohol and suicide deaths per 100,000, 2018 to 2023, which includes suicides by drug poisoning in both the drug and the suicide rate	counties with a JEC rate, a complete WONDER rate and at least 100 respondents with each of the ladder, pain and stress items	interviews: ladder 2009 to 2017, feelings 2008 to 2017; JEC deaths of despair 2015; WONDER deaths 2018 to 2023	95% CI 0.77 to 0.84	534 counties	respondents with the pain item in each county	CDC WONDER underlying cause of death
r_pain_jec_same	+0.69	correlation coefficient	correlation across these counties between the county share reporting physical pain and the JEC 2015 rate, counties weighted by their respondents with the pain item, bootstrap over counties; the WONDER rate is the sum of the county crude rates of drug, alcohol and suicide deaths per 100,000, 2018 to 2023, which includes suicides by drug poisoning in both the drug and the suicide rate	counties with a JEC rate, a complete WONDER rate and at least 100 respondents with each of the ladder, pain and stress items	interviews: ladder 2009 to 2017, feelings 2008 to 2017; JEC deaths of despair 2015; WONDER deaths 2018 to 2023	95% CI 0.64 to 0.74	534 counties	respondents with the pain item in each county	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_pain_wonder	+0.58	correlation coefficient	correlation across these counties between the county share reporting physical pain and the WONDER rate, counties weighted by their respondents with the pain item, bootstrap over counties; the WONDER rate is the sum of the county crude rates of drug, alcohol and suicide deaths per 100,000, 2018 to 2023, which includes suicides by drug poisoning in both the drug and the suicide rate	counties with a JEC rate, a complete WONDER rate and at least 100 respondents with each of the ladder, pain and stress items	interviews: ladder 2009 to 2017, feelings 2008 to 2017; JEC deaths of despair 2015; WONDER deaths 2018 to 2023	95% CI 0.51 to 0.64	534 counties	respondents with the pain item in each county	CDC WONDER underlying cause of death
r_person_anger	−0.18	correlation coefficient	correlation between the ladder score and the 0/1 answer across respondents, unweighted, bootstrap over counties	respondents with a ladder score and an answer to the anger item	interviews in the years the ladder (2009 to 2017) and the feeling were both asked	95% CI −0.18 to −0.18	1,686,646 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_person_enjoy	+0.26	correlation coefficient	correlation between the ladder score and the 0/1 answer across respondents, unweighted, bootstrap over counties	respondents with a ladder score and an answer to the enjoyment item	interviews in the years the ladder (2009 to 2017) and the feeling were both asked	95% CI 0.26 to 0.26	2,211,300 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_person_pain	−0.20	correlation coefficient	correlation between the ladder score and the 0/1 answer across respondents, unweighted, bootstrap over counties	respondents with a ladder score and an answer to the physical pain item	interviews in the years the ladder (2009 to 2017) and the feeling were both asked	95% CI −0.20 to −0.20	2,213,777 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_person_worry	−0.28	correlation coefficient	correlation between the ladder score and the 0/1 answer across respondents, unweighted, bootstrap over counties	respondents with a ladder score and an answer to the worry item	interviews in the years the ladder (2009 to 2017) and the feeling were both asked	95% CI −0.28 to −0.28	2,214,180 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
r_stress_wonder	−0.14	correlation coefficient	correlation across these counties between the county share reporting stress and the WONDER rate, counties weighted by their respondents with the pain item, bootstrap over counties; the WONDER rate is the sum of the county crude rates of drug, alcohol and suicide deaths per 100,000, 2018 to 2023, which includes suicides by drug poisoning in both the drug and the suicide rate	counties with a JEC rate, a complete WONDER rate and at least 100 respondents with each of the ladder, pain and stress items	interviews: ladder 2009 to 2017, feelings 2008 to 2017; JEC deaths of despair 2015; WONDER deaths 2018 to 2023	95% CI −0.23 to −0.05	534 counties	respondents with the pain item in each county	CDC WONDER underlying cause of death
rent_d1	$2,697	dollars per month, HUD two-bedroom Fair Market Rent	unweighted mean over interviews of the FY2025 two-bedroom Fair Market Rent of the respondent's county (a stand-in for relative price levels in the interview years), interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the least deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by the Area Deprivation Index of the respondent's county	HUD fiscal year 2025	95% CI $2,594 to $2,800	353,555 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents	The rent is an FY2025 area standard, shared by the counties of a metro, used here only as a proxy for relative price levels.
rent_d10	$943	dollars per month, HUD two-bedroom Fair Market Rent	unweighted mean over interviews of the FY2025 two-bedroom Fair Market Rent of the respondent's county (a stand-in for relative price levels in the interview years), interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the most deprived tenth of interviews, ranked by the Area Deprivation Index of the respondent's county	HUD fiscal year 2025	95% CI $932 to $953	351,962 respondents	none (unweighted)	HUD Fair Market Rents	The rent is an FY2025 area standard, shared by the counties of a metro, used here only as a proxy for relative price levels.
share_enjoy	86%	percent reporting enjoyment a lot of the day yesterday	unweighted share of respondents who reported the feeling	respondents with a ladder score and an answer to the enjoyment item	interviews in the years the item was asked		2,211,300 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
share_income_reported	81%	percent of interviews that report a household income bracket	share of interviews with a household income bracket (unweighted count)	interviews with a county	2008 to 2017		3,519,539 respondents	none (unweighted count)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
share_sad	17%	percent reporting sadness a lot of the day yesterday	unweighted share of respondents who reported the feeling	respondents with a ladder score and an answer to the sadness item	interviews in the years the item was asked		2,054,693 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
share_zip_adi	97.6%	percent of interviews with a county whose ZIP code has a ZCTA Area Deprivation Index	share of interviews that take a ZIP-area deprivation rank (the ZIP code is treated as the ZCTA of the same number)	interviews with a county	ADI 2023		3,519,539 respondents	none (unweighted count)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
slope_pooled	0.250	ladder points per household income bracket step	coefficient on the household income bracket (1 to 6) in a regression of the ladder score with no other terms, unweighted, errors clustered on county	respondents with a household income bracket and a ladder score	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 0.246 to 0.253	1,806,805 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
slope_pooled_with08	0.256	ladder points per household income bracket step	the pooled income slope of the ladder recomputed with the 2008 ladder answers left in, unweighted, errors clustered on county	respondents with a household income bracket and a ladder score, including 2008	interviews in 2008 to 2017 including the 2008 ladder, which carries a question-order artifact	95% CI 0.252 to 0.259	2,074,160 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
slope_within	0.251	ladder points per household income bracket step	coefficient on the household income bracket (1 to 6) in a regression of the ladder score with county fixed effects, unweighted, errors clustered on county	respondents with a household income bracket and a ladder score	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 0.247 to 0.255	1,806,803 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
step_age_sex_county	−0.30	ladder points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	gap between the extreme tenths after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band and sex, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI −0.36 to −0.23	350,199 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
step_edu_county	−0.11	ladder points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	gap between the extreme tenths after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex and three-level education, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI −0.15 to −0.07	350,199 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
step_edu_zip	−0.21	ladder points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	gap between the extreme tenths after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex and three-level education, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the two extreme ZIP area tenths	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI −0.25 to −0.17	343,365 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
step_income_county	+0.13	ladder points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	gap between the extreme tenths after comparing respondents within cells of five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI 0.10 to 0.16	350,199 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
step_none_county	−0.27	ladder points, most deprived tenth minus least deprived tenth	gap between the extreme tenths on the interviews that report every characteristic, before any adjustment, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents with age, sex, race, education, household income and a county rent in the two extreme county tenths	interviews in 2009 to 2017	95% CI −0.34 to −0.21	350,199 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
stress_inc1	43.6%	percent reporting stress a lot of the day yesterday	unweighted share, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the poorest household income bracket	interviews in 2008 to 2017	95% CI 43.4% to 43.9%	441,398 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
stress_inc6	37.7%	percent reporting stress a lot of the day yesterday	unweighted share, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the richest household income bracket	interviews in 2008 to 2017	95% CI 37.3% to 38.0%	528,004 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
stress_q1	37.4%	percent reporting stress a lot of the day yesterday	unweighted share, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the lowest fifth of interviews, ranked by the deaths-of-despair rate of the respondent's county	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 36.9% to 37.9%	465,362 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
stress_q5	36.4%	percent reporting stress a lot of the day yesterday	unweighted share, interval clustered by the respondent's county	respondents in the highest fifth of interviews, ranked by the deaths-of-despair rate of the respondent's county	interviews 2008 to 2017; deaths of despair 2015	95% CI 36.1% to 36.8%	474,370 respondents	none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
stress_range_2to6	2.3	percentage points (highest minus lowest bracket)	the highest minus the lowest unweighted share reporting stress among the second to sixth household income brackets	respondents in the five household income brackets above the poorest	interviews in 2008 to 2017			none (unweighted)	Gallup U.S. Daily Poll
vsplit_between	29.7	percent of the variance of tract life expectancy	share of the population-weighted variance of tract life expectancy at birth between counties, counting states and counties within states together (the sum of the two canonical shares from b2.canon.variance_split)	residents of non-institutional tracts with a life expectancy estimate (50 states and DC)	deaths in 2010 to 2015 (USALEEP, area-weighted onto 2020 tracts)		78,008 tracts	ACS 2019-2023 tract population	USALEEP life expectancy
vsplit_county	15.9	percent of the variance of tract life expectancy	share of the population-weighted variance of tract life expectancy at birth between counties within states (sum-of-squares decomposition)	residents of non-institutional tracts with a life expectancy estimate (50 states and DC)	deaths in 2010 to 2015 (USALEEP, area-weighted onto 2020 tracts)		78,008 tracts	ACS 2019-2023 tract population	USALEEP life expectancy	Connecticut's nine planning regions stand in for its counties. The tract estimates are modeled; their mean squared standard error equals 26.7 percent of the total variance and sits inside the within-county share.
vsplit_state	13.7	percent of the variance of tract life expectancy	share of the population-weighted variance of tract life expectancy at birth between states (sum-of-squares decomposition)	residents of non-institutional tracts with a life expectancy estimate (50 states and DC)	deaths in 2010 to 2015 (USALEEP, area-weighted onto 2020 tracts)		78,008 tracts	ACS 2019-2023 tract population	USALEEP life expectancy	Connecticut's nine planning regions stand in for its counties. The tract estimates are modeled; their mean squared standard error equals 26.7 percent of the total variance and sits inside the within-county share.

Definitions

Survey weights: Numbers attached to survey respondents that say how many people in the population each one represents, so that results describe the whole population and not only the people who answered.
Cantril ladder: A survey question that asks people to place their life on a ladder whose bottom step is the worst possible life and whose top step is the best possible. It measures how people evaluate their life as a whole, not how they felt yesterday.
Area Deprivation Index (ADI): A score that ranks neighborhoods by income, education, employment and housing conditions drawn from the American Community Survey. In this book a higher national percentile means a more deprived neighborhood.
ZCTA: ZIP Code Tabulation Area, the Census Bureau's approximation of a ZIP code as a set of census blocks. It lets census data be reported by ZIP code, though some ZIP codes have no matching ZCTA.
ZIP code: A postal delivery code assigned by the U.S. Postal Service. It describes mail routes, not a fixed area, so ZIP-keyed data must be matched to ZCTAs before they are mapped with census data.
SD units (SEDA): Test scores stated in units of the typical spread of scores around the national average, so that a score reads as the number of such spreads above or below the national average. SEDA also reports scores in grade levels, which are a separate scale.
Fixed effects: A regression adjustment that gives each group, such as each county, its own baseline. The estimate then rests on differences within groups.

Methods

This chapter compares Gallup interviewees across tenths of county deprivation, first as they are and then within cells of age, sex, race, education and household income. The extract has no survey weights, so every estimate is unweighted, and an interval around an unweighted average does not make it nationally representative. The ladder gap between the most and least deprived tenths changes sign with the income measure: it turns positive at the same nominal household income and is near zero or below once county rent levels are allowed for. The ladder and the feelings are asked in different years and are never combined.

Interview sample

Gallup respondent rows are read inside Box and aggregated; nothing at respondent level is published. Every Gallup estimate is unweighted, because the extract has no survey weights, and levels can differ from the weighted figures Gallup publishes.

Every comparison within cells uses one sample, the interviews that report every cell variable and a county rent, so the cell means come from the same interviews at every step.

Questions and years

The ladder is scored 0 to 10; the second ladder item asks where the respondent expects to stand in about five years. Both ladder items are cut to 2009 to 2017, because political questions preceded the ladder in 2008 and the 2008 ladder runs low (Deaton 2012; Gallup removed the questions for part of the sample in early January 2009 and added a transition question in April 2009). The ladder is asked of nearly all respondents in 2010 to 2012, of 85% in 2009 and of 49% from 2013 to 2017, so the pooled ladder figures weight 2009 to 2012 most.

Feelings are answers (yes or no) to whether the respondent experienced the feeling during a lot of the day yesterday. The feelings are not affected by the 2008 question order and keep 2008, so the pooled feelings figures weight 2008 to 2012 most. Each item is counted in the years it was asked, which are listed in the item-coverage figure, and a few stray answers in years when an item was not asked are dropped.

The ladder and the feelings are never combined into one index.

Figure explained here: Figure 1

County assignment

The county of an interview comes from the respondent's ZIP code and is approximate near county lines; interviews with no county are dropped.

County deprivation is the mean of the Area Deprivation Index 2023 national ranks of a county's tracts, weighted by 2019-2023 tract population (Connecticut tracts move to the eight legacy counties, the retired Alaska and South Dakota codes move to their successors, Puerto Rico is excluded, and the split county of Valdez-Cordova has no value). ZIP-area deprivation is the 2023 ZCTA national rank of the ZIP code's number, an area-weighted approximation; a ZIP code is not a ZCTA, the ZIP-to-ZCTA crosswalk is not staged, and Connecticut has no ZCTAs. Deciles of deprivation are cut once on every interview that has the measure, so each holds about a tenth of interviews.

County means for the correlations need at least 100 respondents with the item, and the same counties enter every row. The deaths-of-despair rate is a single 2015 cross-section for the larger counties, joined on the county code. The Joint Economic Committee's file keeps it as a cross-check series and does not document its population base or age adjustment, so the chapter checks it against CDC WONDER: on counties whose drug, alcohol and suicide counts are published in every year 2018 to 2023 (complete counties, as in the chapter on overdose, alcohol and suicide), the two rates correlate +0.81 across 534 counties; the WONDER rate sums three crude rates and includes suicides by drug poisoning in both the drug and the suicide rate.

Adjusted comparisons

Comparing respondents within cells subtracts from each respondent's value the mean of everyone in the same cell (five-year age band (age capped at 85), sex, race, three-level education and household income bracket) and adds the overall mean; the adjusted group means then compare like with like. Education has three levels in the cells (a six-level item gives 0.13 for the main comparison, against +0.13 with three levels) and ages above the oldest five-year band share it.

The sign of the ladder gap depends on how income is measured. Household income is the harmonized six-bracket variable, in nominal dollars; the top bracket has no upper limit. The price sensitivities add a quintile of the county's HUD two-bedroom Fair Market Rent for fiscal year 2025, or its logarithm as a linear control, to the cells; counties in a metro share one rent, New England towns are averaged to legacy counties with HUD's 2022 population, and the FY2025 rent stands in for relative price levels in the interview years.

The equal-county version averages the cell-adjusted values within each county and then compares the means of counties with at least the survey floor of interviews, each county counted once, with a bootstrap over counties.

Figure explained here: Figure 2

Uncertainty

Intervals for means, shares and differences are 95% intervals clustered by county (t distribution with the number of counties minus one). A bootstrap over counties resamples whole counties to see how much an estimate varies; the correlations across counties, the intraclass correlation and the share of a gap that adjustment removes use a bootstrap over whole counties with 2,000 draws (seed 12345, shared draws within a statistic). The intraclass correlation is the one-way ANOVA estimator.

Four rankings of the same places

The comparison follows the book's ranking switch rule, fixed on October 28, 2026 before any of these gradients was computed. The main gradient of the chapter is recomputed under four rankings of the same places, with the outcome, period, weights, bins and intervals unchanged: the published ADI; a standardized index that applies the ADI's coefficients to its measures after standardizing each one across tracts; median household income; and the share of adults 25 and older with a bachelor's degree or more. The three alternatives come from ACS tract estimates for 2019 to 2023, the period of the ADI.

All four rankings use the same places, the 3,121 counties that have the outcome and all four rankings, so the ADI panel can differ slightly from the chapter's main figure. Tracts enter only if they have every input of the standardized index, which leaves out tracts without a median rent, home value or mortgage cost. A respondent's county takes the population-weighted mean of the ranks of its common-sample tracts, with Connecticut tracts moved to the eight legacy counties and retired Alaska and South Dakota codes moved to their successors, and the tenths are tenths of interviews, cut once on every interview whose county has all four rankings, as in the chapter's main figure.

A pattern counts as changed when the worse end switches sides, when the two ends differ under one ranking and not the other, or when the rank correlation of bin order and bin mean falls on the other side of 0.9 and moves by at least 0.1.

Figure explained here: Figure 8

What these data cannot show

Chapter 4.5, Mental distress in young adults (https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/mental-distress-in-young-adults) measures frequent mental distress in a different survey with survey weights, and its estimates are not directly comparable with the unweighted Gallup levels here.

References

Cantril, Hadley (1965). The Pattern of Human Concerns. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ.
Deaton, Angus (2012). The financial crisis and the well-being of Americans: 2011 OEP Hicks Lecture. Oxford Economic Papers 64(1): 1-26. doi:10.1093/oep/gpr051
Kahneman, Daniel; Deaton, Angus (2010). High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(38): 16489-16493. doi:10.1073/pnas.1011492107
Killingsworth, Matthew A.; Kahneman, Daniel; Mellers, Barbara (2023). Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120(10): e2208661120. doi:10.1073/pnas.2208661120
Graham, Carol; Pinto, Sergio (2019). Unequal hopes and lives in the USA: optimism, race, place, and premature mortality. Journal of Population Economics 32(2): 665-733. doi:10.1007/s00148-018-0687-y
Ludwig, Jens; Duncan, Greg J.; Gennetian, Lisa A.; Katz, Lawrence F.; Kessler, Ronald C.; Kling, Jeffrey R.; Sanbonmatsu, Lisa (2012). Neighborhood effects on the long-term well-being of low-income adults. Science 337(6101): 1505-1510. doi:10.1126/science.1224648
Case, Anne; Deaton, Angus (2020). Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Case, Anne; Deaton, Angus (2015). Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112(49): 15078-15083. doi:10.1073/pnas.1518393112

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data/geo/dim_geo.parquet	1,180,921	29d5e4d943552d54aeb6ba92aadc939d9bd15bdea553c78357dbd516757be627	e58c8c488df54ab3187f5461f179322afdc49c9bd2315404003fe1272eea32c3
data/raw/acs/deprivation_components_2019_2023/tract.parquet	13,197,793	5545cde2cbe96a8b56e468d65388248a241aa6bd300d3c9e325d08d3f86b11da	5c8ec454d066988b0f1a01aaa6ed34ebfc05d162e01cf9c6bb01f9198cbaff12
data/raw/gallup/gallup_us.parquet	209,530,597	b57c719f2c1d4749e43b1a70ca6dbd97f0480a0b538983091eea7eadfec40551	b8167235969e50da6143a0e8d3e74ffb8f7c231743acc9fb2a78130a602af6f5
data/staged/adi/adi_atlas_tract2020_2023.parquet	798,078	5e409bc212ff871def780fa27b4cf8b616d9da420b2b9f6455517eddcd8c1a95	5e409bc212ff871def780fa27b4cf8b616d9da420b2b9f6455517eddcd8c1a95
data/staged/adi/adi_atlas_zcta_2023.parquet	766,397	5f53b97a981f9e88dd58af9e756554119580de309d750b7af6c2206bd79b6415	5f53b97a981f9e88dd58af9e756554119580de309d750b7af6c2206bd79b6415
data/staged/crosswalks/ct_tract2020_to_old_county.parquet	15,842	961ef39f31596ef65fca2c67d5f2f63e533c5dc9b49745d3bb6437844e4b831d	961ef39f31596ef65fca2c67d5f2f63e533c5dc9b49745d3bb6437844e4b831d
data/staged/housing/hud_fmr_area_fy2025.parquet	220,184	e8acd06036b1bf0c46d350385c9cf08de423cd7145ead42ac2b6bf9367361b7d	e8acd06036b1bf0c46d350385c9cf08de423cd7145ead42ac2b6bf9367361b7d
data/staged/life_expectancy/usaleep_tract2020.parquet	1,316,169	9c9c7f103791b75eddba74e68a89804efdf2486b6b66bb4bc02a46ba5bf8bc23	27317107be2465d9fd5e83271dea0cd6e915ee419e2802bedc28747d0a41d38f
data/staged/mortality/wonder_ucd_alcohol_county_2018_2024.parquet	289,631	478b6b5f8ffa061bcca1df84162d1e169babeb7832bc9818379af9be382a778f	478b6b5f8ffa061bcca1df84162d1e169babeb7832bc9818379af9be382a778f
data/staged/mortality/wonder_ucd_drug_county_2018_2024.parquet	308,988	b0e5cb6dfb44fc1ce53a192faf74cb84277bb5d601a3fc32b65078a7ec03bbf1	b0e5cb6dfb44fc1ce53a192faf74cb84277bb5d601a3fc32b65078a7ec03bbf1
data/staged/mortality/wonder_ucd_suicide_county_2018_2024.parquet	290,192	448558540a3f42296acf7f66a945f7c6794fd6f4dc9c7032a18a3d105d0541f1	448558540a3f42296acf7f66a945f7c6794fd6f4dc9c7032a18a3d105d0541f1
data/staged/mortality/wonder_ucd_suicide_state_2018_2024.parquet	15,948	7588fe51ddda48e57e88852172442b4d2bf64689882e600ebf342668ff79ea1a	7588fe51ddda48e57e88852172442b4d2bf64689882e600ebf342668ff79ea1a
data/staged/ses/acs5_tract2020_2019_2023.parquet	7,232,424	5fe6f730a35225f14d5d8abfc6b9bce58b52e545f309a7eac74f1dae74d7a31c	7b4a2475b3852d3f91804716a04566ef8ceadacec2be9fb85f5eb642078efac6
data/staged/social_capital/jec_social_capital_county.parquet	460,297	1f042e817f25c79bc96cf0a256133c4068e655bd10caff55c2ae0dc3c8f7df22	1f042e817f25c79bc96cf0a256133c4068e655bd10caff55c2ae0dc3c8f7df22
data/staged/svi/svi_tract2020_2022.parquet	17,740,415	cb3860d8edc2aaf1f2a02211a58f7a0b80457eb6ad9a37b5ec8abb2d5da9da10	e371a4a696d5bed05d54ad7c5b6ca2504508805b847ec415c2322be7f66ec2b2

Outputs

File	SHA-256
facts.json	ed1377d46cea9f92d315518cf23107c167643246e6f909612c77af42aa4f2748
figures/alt_rankings.json	3eac056a094f131714b25d7ccf86a56f742087fb29f3672721187b0e41f7d2a0
figures/feelings_by_deprivation.json	99a6721eb790cdd7c6b7d160ce88464b3cfb671b6df07e039b85abf61a2de409
figures/felt_despair.json	8e31b0d405922f512bfc224fcf4184fb48724c411bd9dc41b1d0fe4b5dbc4c2f
figures/income_gradient.json	6bffedc2e663b1b57dd9961bbe3d220ac8b4c2bcb4ed58c2b17d7928f249cb1e
figures/income_within_places.json	eaedcd97d39a29a27cc3c95c9288ac734e1d2cdb3949e539e95d2170ed115c49
figures/item_coverage.json	c235091f38314038f947f7941c5b788c9fcad1b44670c4debc284c5e533629bb
figures/ladder_and_feelings.json	9fc753bc28fa69b4cd62807b730eaef4dd10cc64b46f0968579cec32d41bb428
figures/ladder_by_deprivation.json	b563618cd2af45b968f7d7d33c2b7b1c36d5f02d2f51832cd765483997aff533
meta.json	46f9840e1a9f0ed18e57c20ba6706658e4b1834dd324c6a9821293151c5bf339
refs.json	af3d3761f67ed01c066f1a1224342ebede46f2a79cc9e31ae92c4bc16acb298b

Machine formats

Report (Markdown): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/report.md
Every estimate (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/facts.json
Table 1, figure "item_coverage" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/figures/item_coverage.json
Table 2, figure "ladder_by_deprivation" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/figures/ladder_by_deprivation.json
Table 3, figure "feelings_by_deprivation" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/figures/feelings_by_deprivation.json
Table 4, figure "income_gradient" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/figures/income_gradient.json
Table 5, figure "income_within_places" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/figures/income_within_places.json
Table 6, figure "ladder_and_feelings" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/figures/ladder_and_feelings.json
Table 7, figure "felt_despair" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/figures/felt_despair.json
Table 8, figure "alt_rankings" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/figures/alt_rankings.json
Index of every report: https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/llms.txt; all reports in one file: https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/llms-full.txt