# ZIP Code Destiny > From cradle to grave. Vishal Singh, NYU Stern. https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode Cite as: Singh, Vishal. ZIP Code Destiny: From cradle to grave. 2026. https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode Methods: https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/reference/methods Every chapter has a report at /report, the same report as Markdown at /report.md (listed below), its facts at https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report//facts.json and each figure's rows at https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report//figures/.json. All reports in one file: https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/llms-full.txt ## Chapters - [Introduction, The whole span. Place across an American life](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/place-across-an-american-life/report.md): Birth outcomes, schooling, income, housing, health, length of life and well-being differ across American places, many in step with neighborhood deprivation, while some follow other patterns or change when the comparison moves inside a county. - [Chapter 1.1, Weighing the ingredients. What the deprivation index measures](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/anatomy-of-deprivation/report.md): The Area Deprivation Index orders 75,717 census tracts almost in reverse order of median home value, with a rank correlation of −0.988, and the home value term alone accounts for 74.3% of the variance of the score its formula produces. - [Chapter 1.2, Two zooms. What a county average leaves out](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/deprivation-at-two-zooms/report.md): A county's percentile on a deprivation index follows the average of its tracts' percentiles, with a correlation of 0.96, yet 32.7% of residents live in a tract more than 25 percentile points from their county's percentile. - [Chapter 2.1, The starting line. Birthweight and preterm birth](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/birthweight-and-preterm-birth/report.md): Low birthweight was 7.4% of births in the least deprived tenth of counties and 9.7% in the most deprived, for births in 2018 to 2024 in counties of 100,000 or more residents. - [Chapter 2.2, The first year. Infant mortality](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/infant-mortality/report.md): Infant mortality in 2018 to 2022 ran from 3.7 deaths per 1,000 live births in Massachusetts and New Hampshire to 8.7 in Mississippi. - [Chapter 2.3, Before the first breath. Smoking in pregnancy](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/smoking-in-pregnancy/report.md): In large counties with a usable count, the share of births to mothers who reported smoking fell from 5.4% in 2018 to 1.9% in 2024 and stayed higher where county income was lower. - [Chapter 2.4, The vanishing cradle. Where births are falling](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/where-births-are-falling/report.md): Births in the counties that CDC WONDER identifies fell 4.6% from 2018 to 2024, by 5.6% in the least deprived quartile of counties and 7.3% in the most deprived. - [Chapter 3.1, The classroom staircase. Test scores, class and race](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/test-scores-class-and-race/report.md): Average achievement in third through eighth grade, 2009 to 2019, differs by 2.54 grade levels between the 5th and 95th percentile of counties and rises with county income in 45 of 45 states. - [Chapter 3.2, Two gaps, one district. Gender gaps in reading and math](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/gender-gaps-in-reading-and-math/report.md): Girls outscored boys in reading in 99.9% of school districts over 2009 to 2019, and the math gap, boys minus girls, rose from −0.20 grade levels in the lowest-income tenth of districts to +0.08 in the highest. - [Chapter 3.4, The crossroads. School discipline and incarceration](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/school-discipline-and-incarceration/report.md): Out-of-school suspensions in the 2020 to 2021 school year ran from 3.1 per thousand students in the least deprived tenth of school districts to 23.6 in the most deprived. - [Chapter 4.1, The toll booth. College access, price and earnings](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/college-access-price-and-earnings/report.md): A decade after entry, the median former student who received federal aid earned $28,330 at the median for-profit college and $42,014 at the median public college, for students who entered in 2009 to 2011. - [Chapter 4.2, A generation back. Teen births](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/teen-births/report.md): The Opportunity Atlas predicts a teen birth for 38.5% of women born in 1978 to 1983 to parents at the 25th income percentile and raised in tracts now in the most deprived tenth, against 12.9% in the least deprived. - [Chapter 4.3, Two ladders, one street. Race, income and mobility](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/race-income-and-mobility/report.md): White children from low-income families born in 1978 to 1983 reached a higher adult income rank than Black children raised in the same tract in 92.5% of the 30,997 tracts where both are estimated. - [Chapter 4.5, The young and the anxious. Mental distress in young adults](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/mental-distress-in-young-adults/report.md): Frequent mental distress among adults 18 to 24 rose from 12.3% in 2014 to 25.3% in 2022 and was 21.8% in 2024, in a survey that draws new adults each year. - [Chapter 5.1, Jobs here, workers there. Work, wages and access to jobs](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/work-wages-and-access-to-jobs/report.md): In 2019, in the fifth of counties with the fewest local jobs per job held by residents, 45.4% of residents' jobs were in the top earnings band, against 39.5% of the jobs located in those counties. - [Chapter 5.2, The deed and the ledger. Home value, income and redlining](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/home-value-income-and-redlining/report.md): Across census tracts, each counted once, life expectancy at birth for deaths in 2010 to 2015 is 2.2 years higher for each doubling of the median home value for 2019 to 2023. - [Chapter 5.3, The application and the answer. Mortgage denials](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/mortgage-denials/report.md): Lenders denied 13.8% of the home-purchase applications they decided in 2024 in the most deprived tenth of census tracts and 7.8% in the least deprived tenth. - [Chapter 5.4, The first of the month. Renting, affordability and eviction](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/renting-affordability-and-eviction/report.md): 45.6% of renter households with a computed burden spent more than 30% of their income on housing in 2018 to 2022, against 20.8% of owner households, a gap detectable only among low-income households. - [Chapter 6.1, The air you're assigned. Air pollution](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/air-pollution/report.md): The national traffic-pollution percentile of census tracts, modeled for 2020, has a correlation of −0.41 with the Area Deprivation Index across tracts but +0.19 within counties. - [Chapter 6.2, Alone together. Civic life, loneliness and partnership](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/civic-life-loneliness-and-partnership/report.md): Voter turnout in the 2020 presidential election was 72.1% of adult citizens in the least deprived tenth of counties and 56.4% in the most deprived, and census self-response was 21.0 points lower across the same tenths. - [Chapter 6.3, The ladder and the day. Life evaluation and daily feelings](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/life-evaluation-and-daily-feelings/report.md): 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. - [Chapter 6.4, Two clocks of a life. Well-being across the life span](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/well-being-across-the-life-span/report.md): In Gallup interviews from 2009 to 2017, life evaluation averaged 6.84 at ages 45 to 54 and 7.38 at ages 75 to 94, and the lowest point of the unadjusted profile by year of age falls at age 54. - [Chapter 7.1, The body keeps the address. Health behaviors and the supply of care](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/health-behaviors-and-the-supply-of-care/report.md): In the most deprived tenth of census tracts, the modeled 2022 share of adults with a past-year dental visit was 24.4 points below the least deprived tenth, and the routine-checkup share 3.6 points above. - [Chapter 7.2, The rich person's vice. Health behaviors, person by person](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/health-behaviors-person-by-person/report.md): Among adults, the share who binged on alcohol in the past month was 13.3% in the lowest of five household income bands and 20.4% in the highest, while smoking, obesity and physical inactivity were each less common in the highest band. - [Chapter 7.3, Where illness keeps company. Multiple chronic conditions](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/multiple-chronic-conditions/report.md): Weighted by adults, census tracts in the most deprived tenth were high on 5.7 of nine modeled chronic-condition prevalences on average in 2022, against 0.5 in the least deprived tenth, a count for tracts and not people. - [Chapter 7.4, The twilight. Disability, retirement and Medicare](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/disability-retirement-and-medicare/report.md): In CDC PLACES model estimates from 2022 survey responses, the share of adults with any disability was 23.3% in the least deprived tenth of census tracts and 42.9% in the most deprived. - [Chapter 8.1, The sliver. Gun homicide and the causes of early death](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/gun-homicide-and-causes-of-early-death/report.md): Outside New York City, the tract clusters with the highest firearm homicide rates hold 50% of the deaths that CDC's rates imply for 2022 to 2024 and 9.5% of residents. - [Chapter 8.2, Two despairs. Overdose, alcohol and suicide](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/overdose-alcohol-and-suicide/report.md): Across counties with a stable modeled rate for suicide, overdose and homicide in 2019 to 2023, suicide death rates are only weakly related to overdose and homicide rates (population-weighted correlations of +0.13 and −0.02). - [Chapter 8.3, Last call. Mortality trends, 2018 to 2024](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/mortality-trends-2018-2024/report.md): In CDC WONDER, the national overdose death rate peaked in 2022 at 50.5% above its 2019 level and was 8.5% above it in 2024. - [Chapter 8.4, Two addresses. Place and the length of a life](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/place-and-the-length-of-a-life/report.md): Life expectancy at birth was 82.3 years in the least deprived tenth of census tracts and 74.0 years in the most deprived, for deaths recorded in 2010 to 2015. - [Chapter 8.5, The lost years. Violence and the life-expectancy gap](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/violence-and-the-life-expectancy-gap/report.md): A rough accounting that assumes 41.5 years of life lost per homicide attributes 4.8% of the gap of 8.3 years in life expectancy between the most and the least deprived tenths of tracts to homicide. - [Chapter 9.1, One ranking, many outcomes. How far one ranking goes](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/how-far-one-ranking-goes/report.md): Of 30 outcome gradients drawn from 18 chapters, 17 are steadily worse toward the more deprived end of the ranking each chapter uses, 5 are better there, and 2 show no detectable difference between the least and the most deprived places. - [Chapter 9.2, The eight Americas. Eight types of neighborhood](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/eight-types-of-neighborhood/report.md): Mean life expectancy for deaths in 2010 to 2015 runs from 74.7 to 82.1 years across eight overlapping types of census tract, built by k-means from 81,343 tracts on 7 measures of income, poverty, education, family structure, tenure, age and density, with no outcome among them. - [Chapter 9.3, Coda. Places that beat the model](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/places-that-beat-the-model/report.md): Five census measures from 2019 to 2023 account for 44.0% of the variation in tract upward mobility for children born in 1978 to 1983, and counties below that prediction cluster in the South. - [Chapter 9.6, Offers, moves and policies. What moving can change](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/what-moving-can-change/report.md): Randomized offers of housing vouchers, studies of children whose families moved at different ages, and a trial of help with the housing search find changes for particular families under particular conditions, from 15% to 53% of families moving to high-mobility areas in one trial, and none of them measures what the gradients in this book would become if places changed. - [Chapter 10.1, The factory floor. Gradients, slopes and variance](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/gradients-slopes-and-variance/report.md): For deaths in 2010 to 2015, tract life expectancy is 1.12 years lower per ten-point step of the ADI within counties, and lower in more deprived tracts in all 267 metros. - [Chapter 10.2, Sorting instead of ranking. Families of places](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/families-of-places/report.md): Among 4 families of census tracts sorted on deprivation measures alone, life expectancy for deaths in 2010 to 2015 runs from 74.7 years in the high-poverty family to 81.7 years in the high-income family. - [Chapter 10.3, The counties that don't count. Suppressed counties in death data](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/suppressed-counties-in-death-data/report.md): CDC WONDER withheld the death count in 47.1% to 57.9% of county-years for overdose, alcohol-induced deaths and suicide from 2018 to 2023, and the counties it published in every year are selected on their death rates.