# Place across an American life: report

Introduction of ZIP Code Destiny, by Vishal Singh (NYU Stern). Generated from the chapter's data files; the reading version is at https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/place-across-an-american-life. Table n of this report is figure n of the chapter.

## Identification

- Title: Place across an American life
- Label: The whole span
- Chapter: Introduction
- Question: How do circumstances and outcomes differ across American places from birth to old age, and how does the answer change when the comparison becomes more specific?
- Dek: 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.
- Grain: neighborhoods
- Status: published
- Published: 2026-10-11
- Updated: not revised
- Data sources:
  - CDC WONDER natality. Low birthweight by county deprivation tenth, 2018 to 2024, as reported in Birthweight and preterm birth; years: 2018-2024; weights: births
  - County Health Rankings. Low birthweight by mother's race and county deprivation quartile, births in 2016 to 2022, as reported in Birthweight and preterm birth; years: 2024 release; weights: births
  - USALEEP life expectancy. Life expectancy at birth by tract deprivation tenth, deaths in 2010 to 2015, as reported in Place and the length of a life; years: 2010-2015; weights: ACS 2019-2023 tract population
  - HUD CHAS housing affordability. Housing cost burden of renter households by tract deprivation tenth, 2018 to 2022, as reported in Renting, affordability and eviction; years: 2018-2022; weights: renter households with a computed burden
  - Area Deprivation Index. Neighborhood Atlas Area Deprivation Index 2023, the ranking behind every comparison above; years: 2023 release (version 4.0.1; built on ACS 2019-2023); weights: as in each chapter
- Canonical URL: https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/place-across-an-american-life
- Report: https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/place-across-an-american-life/report
- Markdown: https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/place-across-an-american-life/report.md
- BibTeX key: singh2026placeacrossanamericanlife

```bibtex
@misc{singh2026placeacrossanamericanlife,
  author = {Singh, Vishal},
  title = {Place across an American life},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/place-across-an-american-life},
  note = {In ZIP Code Destiny. Published 11 October 2026.}
}
```

## Principal estimates

The facts the dek and the opening prose cite, in order of appearance.

| Estimand | Population | Period | Value | Interval | n | Weights | Source | Fact id |
| --- | --- | --- | ---: | --- | ---: | --- | --- | --- |
| births-weighted mean of county shares (the pooled share), bootstrap interval over counties | live births in the least deprived tenth of the named counties by county deprivation rank | births in 2018 to 2024 | 7.4% | 95% CI 7.2% to 7.7% | 57 counties | births in each county | CDC WONDER natality | lbw_d1 |
| births-weighted mean of county shares (the pooled share), bootstrap interval over counties | live births in the most deprived tenth of the named counties by county deprivation rank | births in 2018 to 2024 | 9.7% | 95% CI 9.2% to 10.3% | 58 counties | births in each county | CDC WONDER natality | lbw_d10 |
| population-weighted mean of tract life expectancy in a tenth of tracts (rank bins of the ADI; tracts with tied ranks fall in the same tenth), bootstrap interval over counties | residents of tracts in the least deprived tenth of tracts by ADI national percentile | deaths in 2010 to 2015 (USALEEP, area-weighted onto 2020 tracts); ADI 2023; ACS 2019-2023 population | 82.3 | 95% CI 82.0 to 82.6 | 7,820 tracts | ACS 2019-2023 tract population | USALEEP life expectancy | le_d1 |
| population-weighted mean of tract life expectancy in a tenth of tracts (rank bins of the ADI; tracts with tied ranks fall in the same tenth), bootstrap interval over counties | residents of tracts in the most deprived tenth of tracts by ADI national percentile | deaths in 2010 to 2015 (USALEEP, area-weighted onto 2020 tracts); ADI 2023; ACS 2019-2023 population | 74.0 | 95% CI 73.7 to 74.3 | 7,844 tracts | ACS 2019-2023 tract population | USALEEP life expectancy | le_d10 |
| HUD's line for a housing cost burden: housing costs above this share of household income | households in the HUD CHAS tabulation | 2018 to 2022 | 30% |   |   | none (definition) | HUD CHAS housing affordability | burden_line |
| pooled share of the tenure's households with the burden over tracts in the tenth, bootstrap over counties | renter households in tracts with an Area Deprivation Index (tenths hold near-equal numbers of tracts; tracts with equal ranks stay together), least deprived tenth | 2018 to 2022; Area Deprivation Index 2023 | 44.4% | 95% CI 41.9% to 46.7% | 8,208 tracts | households of the tenure with a computed burden | HUD CHAS housing affordability | adi_ren_d1 |
| pooled share of the tenure's households with the burden over tracts in the tenth, bootstrap over counties | renter households in tracts with an Area Deprivation Index (tenths hold near-equal numbers of tracts; tracts with equal ranks stay together), most deprived tenth | 2018 to 2022; Area Deprivation Index 2023 | 47.6% | 95% CI 46.6% to 48.4% | 8,207 tracts | households of the tenure with a computed burden | HUD CHAS housing affordability | adi_ren_d10 |

## Findings

Low birthweight was 7.4% (95% CI 7.2% to 7.7%) of births in the least deprived tenth of the counties that CDC WONDER names individually and 9.7% (95% CI 9.2% to 10.3%) in the most deprived, for births in 2018 to 2024. Life expectancy at birth was 82.3 (95% CI 82.0 to 82.6) years in the least deprived tenth of census tracts and 74.0 (95% CI 73.7 to 74.3) years in the most deprived, for deaths in 2010 to 2015.[1] The share of renter households that spend more than 30% of their income on housing was 44.4% (95% CI 41.9% to 46.7%) in the least deprived tenth of tracts and 47.6% (95% CI 46.6% to 48.4%) in the most deprived, for 2018 to 2022.

The three comparisons rank places by the Area Deprivation Index (ADI), a national percentile built from census measures of income, education, employment and housing.[2] Low birthweight and life expectancy are worse at each step toward the deprived end of the ranking. Renters' cost burden changes little along it, and among low-income renters it runs the other way. The three comparisons come from different records, places and years. *ZIP Code Destiny* follows comparisons like these from birth through old age. It asks where a pattern holds, where it fails, and how the answer changes when the comparison becomes more specific.

The title names that inquiry. An address places a person among schools, housing, jobs, services and other residents, and it also reflects who can afford to live there or chooses to. The book examines those differences without assuming that a location settles anyone's future. The word "destiny" is a proposition to test, and each chapter reports how much its evidence supports. "ZIP code" is shorthand as well. Most chapters count census tracts, counties, school districts or survey respondents, and the unit is named in every chapter.

### The questions that connect the chapters

The life course sets the order of the questions. At birth they concern the health of newborns and survival through the first year. School brings achievement, gaps between groups of students, and exclusion through discipline. The move into adulthood brings college, teen births and the adult incomes of children raised in different neighborhoods.

In the working years an address appears in the data as a home value, a mortgage application, a rent burden, a job or a supply of doctors. Some records describe the people who live in a place, and others describe the employers or institutions located there. Keeping the two apart is part of the work. A county with well-paid jobs need not have residents who hold them, and a neighborhood of expensive homes can have renters who struggle to pay.

Health, early death and well-being add further measures: illness and health behavior beside access to care, the geography of different causes of death, social connection, and people's own ratings of their lives. The later chapters take up disability, retirement income, Medicare and well-being at different ages.

(Diagram: The chapters follow outcomes from pregnancy to deaths before old age, with surroundings and well-being measured at every age)

Across these subjects the aim is to find which patterns recur and where they stop. Some outcomes change steadily with neighborhood deprivation, as birthweight and life expectancy do. Others change little with it, as renters' cost burden does, follow another ordering, or change direction when the comparison moves inside a county. Groups in the same place can also reach different outcomes. These departures show what a general account of disadvantage can explain and what it cannot.

The order does not follow one person from a birth certificate to a death certificate. The chapters draw on different populations and periods. Some sources follow birth cohorts into adulthood, some interview different people each year, and some describe a place in a single year. The life course orders the questions without turning these records into one biography.

### A view no single source provides

The chapters draw on administrative records, surveys and estimates that other researchers publish. Birth and death records describe the start and the end of life. Education data compare school districts. The Opportunity Atlas reports the adult incomes of children raised in different places, from linked records that its researchers assembled. Housing and lending records describe prices, rents, applications and eviction filings. Employment records separate jobs at workplaces from jobs held by residents. Health and well-being surveys ask about experiences that no tax return or Medicare payment records.

Each source was made for its own purpose, and their boundaries and dates do not always line up. A census tract, a school district and a county can describe different settings even when their names suggest the same place. Each chapter therefore states what its record counts, whom it covers and what comparison it allows. An eviction filing is a petition in court and not a completed eviction (Chapter 5.4, Renting, affordability and eviction (https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/renting-affordability-and-eviction)). A college earnings figure describes the former students its source covers (Chapter 4.1, College access, price and earnings (https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/college-access-price-and-earnings)). A neighborhood estimate of an illness can be a modeled estimate and not a count of residents who have it.

The sources are not always independent of one another. The CDC PLACES neighborhood health estimates draw on the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and on census inputs that the deprivation index also uses, so agreement between them is not an independent confirmation.[3] A change of source can also show what a map cannot, such as whether the adults who report a behavior are the same adults who report a given household income (Chapter 7.2, Health behaviors, person by person (https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/health-behaviors-person-by-person)). The chapters keep these records apart and do not combine them into one score of a good or a bad place to live.

### How the chapters compare places

Many chapters map an outcome to show where it is high or low, and most set it against income or neighborhood deprivation. A distribution shows how widely places differ and whether a national average describes many of them. The ADI supplies the recurring ranking. The book also examines the ranking itself, what its ingredients emphasize and how it treats expensive places (Chapter 1.1, What the deprivation index measures (https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/anatomy-of-deprivation)), and what happens when neighborhoods are combined into counties (Chapter 1.2, What a county average leaves out (https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/deprivation-at-two-zooms)). A common measure makes the chapters comparable, and it can miss differences that matter. Across all ten tenths of tracts, the renter shares over the burden line stayed within 3.6 points of one another, for 2018 to 2022. Among renters with low incomes, at or below 80% of the area median family income, the share was higher in the least deprived tenth, 75.3% (95% CI 72.6% to 78.1%) against 62.5% (95% CI 61.6% to 63.3%). Gross rent and family income are among the census measures inside the index, so this comparison sorts a ratio of rent to income partly on its own parts (Chapter 1.1, What the deprivation index measures (https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/anatomy-of-deprivation)).

The next comparison usually narrows the question. A national relationship can reflect the mix of regions in the country, and comparing neighborhoods inside the same county removes that source of difference (Chapter 10.1, Gradients, slopes and variance (https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/gradients-slopes-and-variance)). Comparing groups along the same ranking shows whether a difference between them persists at every level of it. In County Health Rankings data for births in 2016 to 2022, low birthweight was 12.4% (95% CI 11.9% to 12.8%) of births to non-Hispanic Black mothers in the least deprived quarter of the counties WONDER names, against 7.6% (95% CI 7.5% to 7.7%) of births to non-Hispanic white mothers in the most deprived quarter (Chapter 2.1, Birthweight and preterm birth (https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/birthweight-and-preterm-birth)). Survey responses from individuals answer a different problem, because a pattern across neighborhood averages need not describe the people inside the neighborhoods (ecological inference).

The chapters also show how much a finding depends on measurement and coverage. Counting every county once answers a different question from counting counties by their residents. A missing value is not a zero. An interval around an estimate describes its uncertainty under the stated method, while a band of places describes how widely the places differ. Each chapter explains these points where they change the reading of a result, and its methods section gives the full procedure.

Setting each end of a ranking against the country as a whole shows a second pattern. For most outcomes the most deprived places stand farther from the national value than the least deprived places do, and for some the least deprived places stand farther (Chapter 9.1, How far one ranking goes (https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/how-far-one-ranking-goes)).

Table 1. The most deprived places usually stand farther from the national value than the least deprived places do

No chapter has to find the pattern of the one before it. Traffic pollution is lower in more deprived tracts across the country and higher in more deprived tracts within a county (Chapter 6.1, Air pollution (https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/air-pollution)), a result that revises the national picture and is reported as found.

### One comparison followed in detail

Chapter 8.4, Place and the length of a life (https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/place-and-the-length-of-a-life) takes the life expectancy contrast above through the steps that the other chapters apply to their own outcomes. The difference between the least and the most deprived tenths of tracts is 8.3 (95% CI 7.9 to 8.7) years, with an interval from resampling whole counties. Both averages are weighted by population and rest on modeled estimates for non-institutional tracts with the required data, and they describe tracts and not the lifespan of any resident. The chapter asks whether the ordering holds across the middle of the deprivation scale, what a county average leaves out, how far apart nearby neighborhoods are under a stated rule, and how much of the spread among tracts is estimation error. The deprivation measures describe 2019 to 2023, after the deaths behind the estimates, and that timing limits what the comparison can show.

The same chapter separates its description of places from the question of what moving would do to a family. It reports a randomized housing-voucher experiment in its own box, labeled with the study's design, and the book keeps every such study apart from its own comparisons. Life expectancy is one example of the method. It does not stand in for birth, school, housing or well-being, and the book does not use it to rank other parts of life.

### How the book is organized

*Measuring rich and poor* opens the book with the ranking itself. It shows what the deprivation index measures and why home values set most of it, and what a county's rank says about the tracts inside it. *An American life* then follows the life course in seven parts: birth; school; becoming an adult (college, teen births, adult income and the mental health of young adults); home, work and money (jobs, home values, lending, rent and eviction); environment, connection and well-being (pollution, civic life, partnership and how people rate their lives at different ages); health and care (behaviors, chronic conditions, the supply of care, disability, retirement income and Medicare); and early death (the causes of death before old age and the length of a life).

*Reading the patterns* sets the outcomes of the book side by side, each on the ranking its chapter uses, and asks how often they change steadily with deprivation. Its later chapters group neighborhoods by their measured characteristics and look for places whose outcomes differ from a model's prediction. A type summarizes a set of places, and a model's residual records what the model leaves out, and neither identifies a policy that works. The volume closes with research of a different kind, randomized experiments and other designs that study moving families or changing places, reported apart from the book's own comparisons. *Methods and sources* explains how the estimates are made, from gradients and slopes to the grouping of places and counts that the sources withhold. A reader can consult it beside any chapter or start there.

(Diagram: The book defines its ranking of places, follows outcomes across the life course, then reads the patterns together)

The sequence follows the life course, and the subjects are not confined to particular ages. Housing and pollution concern children as well as adults, disability can begin long before retirement, and social connection matters throughout life. The order gives a readable route through related questions and does not assign each exposure to an age.

### Reading the book

Reading in order begins with Chapter 1.1, What the deprivation index measures (https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/anatomy-of-deprivation), on what the ranking measures. A reader who wants the life course first can start with Chapter 2.1, Birthweight and preterm birth (https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/birthweight-and-preterm-birth), and a reader who wants the method first can start with Chapter 8.4, Place and the length of a life (https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/place-and-the-length-of-a-life), the comparison described above. The [contents page](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/contents) lists every chapter with its finding. Reading paths connect chapters that ask related questions across the volumes, among them [the argument in eight chapters](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/path/core), [differences inside one county](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/path/the-hyper-local-map), [race and place](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/path/race-and-place), [outcomes that do not follow the gradient](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/path/the-exception) and [methods first](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/path/methods-first).

Three conventions run through every chapter. A map or a chart shows gray where a value is missing or withheld and never draws it as zero. Descriptions of places use verbs that describe, such as "is higher where" and "moves with", and causal verbs appear only in boxes that report a study with a stated design. Each estimate carries its unit, its population, its period and, where it has one, an interval. The [reading guide](https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/reference/reading-guide) explains these conventions and the kinds of evidence behind each claim. The contents also list planned chapters, which describe questions the book has not yet answered.

### What these data cannot show

Most of the book's own analyses describe places. People differ in where they live, and places differ in who lives in them. Comparing more similar places or groups narrows an explanation without ruling out every alternative. A relationship between neighborhood conditions and an outcome does not show what would happen to a person who moved or what a policy would change. Studies with experiments or other stated designs bear on those questions, and the book reports them separately, for the populations, programs and outcomes they studied.

The numbers in this introduction come from different units, sources and years. Births are compared across counties for 2018 to 2024, and for 2016 to 2022 in the comparison by mother's race. Deaths are compared across tracts for 2010 to 2015, and housing costs across tracts for 2018 to 2022. Each is ranked on a deprivation index for 2019 to 2023. They are not measurements of the same people. Some places and groups are missing from the records, some values are withheld, some estimates come from models or from data collected years apart, and several chapters describe cohorts born decades ago and not conditions today. Each chapter states these limits because they decide which comparisons are informative and which questions stay open.

## Tables

### Table 1. The most deprived places usually stand farther from the national value than the least deprived places do

Mean at each end of the ranking each chapter uses, divided by the value for all the places of the comparison, on a log scale so that twice and half the national value sit the same distance from it

| Domain | Outcome | Least deprived end | United States | Most deprived end | Least deprived end divided by the US value | Most deprived end divided by the US value | Unit |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---: | ---: | --- |
| Birth and school | Infant mortality | 4.0 | 5.7 | 8.8 | 0.71 | 1.55 | Infant deaths per 1,000 live births |
| Becoming an adult | Distance to a four-year college | 6.1 | 9.6 | 29.3 | 0.64 | 3.05 | Miles to the nearest four-year campus, average resident |
| Becoming an adult | Incarceration, Black children from low-income families | 3.8 | 5.2% | 6.4 | 0.73 | 1.23 | Percent incarcerated on April 1, 2010 |
| Home, work and money | Mortgage denial rate | 7.8 | 9.0% | 13.8 | 0.87 | 1.54 | Denied share of decided applications (%) |
| Health and care | Current smoking | 9.1 | 14.5% | 22.8 | 0.63 | 1.57 | Percent of adults |
| Health and care | Residents per primary care physician | 1,159 | 1,334 | 2,730 | 0.87 | 2.05 | Residents per provider |
| Early death | Homicide death rate, tracts | 1.8 | 5.4 | 14.8 | 0.32 | 2.72 | Homicide deaths per 100,000 residents a year |
| Early death | Life expectancy at birth | 82.3 | 78.8 | 74.0 | 1.04 | 0.94 | Life expectancy at birth (years) |

Note: Eight of the rows of the chapter How far one ranking goes, chosen to cover the stages of life: five where the most deprived end lies farther from the national value and three where the least deprived end does, about the share in the full set. The chapter shows all of them and counts which end lies farther.

Note: The national value pools all the places of each comparison into one bin, with the estimator and weights of its chapter, and is published there. It covers the places that the chapter ranks, so places without a rank or an estimate are left out.

Source: Figures of the chapters named in each row, data years 1978 to 2024 as each chapter states; estimates as published there: full counts, crude rates, population-weighted means, unweighted survey means or modeled estimates.

Data: https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/place-across-an-american-life/figures/ends_vs_us.json

## All estimates

Every fact in facts.json (14), sorted by id.

| Fact id | Value | Unit | Estimand | Population | Period | Interval | n | Weights | Source | Note |
| --- | ---: | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---: | --- | --- | --- |
| adi_li_ren_d1 | 75.3% | percent of low-income renter households with housing costs above 30% of income | low-income households (at or below 80 percent of HAMFI) with a burden over low-income households of the tenure, pooled over tracts in the tenth, bootstrap over counties | low-income renter households in tracts with an Area Deprivation Index, least deprived tenth | 2018 to 2022; Area Deprivation Index 2023 | 95% CI 72.6% to 78.1% | 7,840 tracts | low-income households of the tenure | HUD CHAS housing affordability |   |
| adi_li_ren_d10 | 62.5% | percent of low-income renter households with housing costs above 30% of income | low-income households (at or below 80 percent of HAMFI) with a burden over low-income households of the tenure, pooled over tracts in the tenth, bootstrap over counties | low-income renter households in tracts with an Area Deprivation Index, most deprived tenth | 2018 to 2022; Area Deprivation Index 2023 | 95% CI 61.6% to 63.3% | 8,194 tracts | low-income households of the tenure | HUD CHAS housing affordability |   |
| adi_ren_d1 | 44.4% | percent of renter households with housing costs above 30% of income | pooled share of the tenure's households with the burden over tracts in the tenth, bootstrap over counties | renter households in tracts with an Area Deprivation Index (tenths hold near-equal numbers of tracts; tracts with equal ranks stay together), least deprived tenth | 2018 to 2022; Area Deprivation Index 2023 | 95% CI 41.9% to 46.7% | 8,208 tracts | households of the tenure with a computed burden | HUD CHAS housing affordability |   |
| adi_ren_d10 | 47.6% | percent of renter households with housing costs above 30% of income | pooled share of the tenure's households with the burden over tracts in the tenth, bootstrap over counties | renter households in tracts with an Area Deprivation Index (tenths hold near-equal numbers of tracts; tracts with equal ranks stay together), most deprived tenth | 2018 to 2022; Area Deprivation Index 2023 | 95% CI 46.6% to 48.4% | 8,207 tracts | households of the tenure with a computed burden | HUD CHAS housing affordability |   |
| adi_ren_range | 3.6 | percentage points, largest minus smallest renter share with housing costs above 30% of income among the ten tenths | largest minus smallest of the ten tenth means (a range of estimates, no interval) | renter households in tracts with an Area Deprivation Index (tenths hold near-equal numbers of tracts; tracts with equal ranks stay together) | 2018 to 2022; Area Deprivation Index 2023 |   | 10 tenths of tracts | households of the tenure with a computed burden | HUD CHAS housing affordability |   |
| burden_line | 30% | percent of household income | HUD's line for a housing cost burden: housing costs above this share of household income | households in the HUD CHAS tabulation | 2018 to 2022 |   |   | none (definition) | HUD CHAS housing affordability |   |
| hamfi_cut | 80% | percent of HUD area median family income | the income line for a low-income household: income at or below this share of HUD's area median family income (HAMFI) | households in the HUD CHAS tabulation | 2018 to 2022 |   |   | none (definition) | HUD CHAS housing affordability |   |
| lbw_black_q1 | 12.4% | percent of live births under 2,500 grams | pooled share of births, bootstrap interval over counties | live births to non-Hispanic Black mothers in the least deprived quartile of the named counties by deprivation rank | births in 2016 to 2022 | 95% CI 11.9% to 12.8% | 133 counties | births to mothers of the group in each county | County Health Rankings |   |
| lbw_d1 | 7.4% | percent of live births under 2,500 grams | births-weighted mean of county shares (the pooled share), bootstrap interval over counties | live births in the least deprived tenth of the named counties by county deprivation rank | births in 2018 to 2024 | 95% CI 7.2% to 7.7% | 57 counties | births in each county | CDC WONDER natality |   |
| lbw_d10 | 9.7% | percent of live births under 2,500 grams | births-weighted mean of county shares (the pooled share), bootstrap interval over counties | live births in the most deprived tenth of the named counties by county deprivation rank | births in 2018 to 2024 | 95% CI 9.2% to 10.3% | 58 counties | births in each county | CDC WONDER natality |   |
| lbw_white_q4 | 7.6% | percent of live births under 2,500 grams | pooled share of births, bootstrap interval over counties | live births to non-Hispanic white mothers in the most deprived quartile of the named counties by deprivation rank | births in 2016 to 2022 | 95% CI 7.5% to 7.7% | 145 counties | births to mothers of the group in each county | County Health Rankings |   |
| le_d1 | 82.3 | years of life expectancy at birth | population-weighted mean of tract life expectancy in a tenth of tracts (rank bins of the ADI; tracts with tied ranks fall in the same tenth), bootstrap interval over counties | residents of tracts in the least deprived tenth of tracts by ADI national percentile | deaths in 2010 to 2015 (USALEEP, area-weighted onto 2020 tracts); ADI 2023; ACS 2019-2023 population | 95% CI 82.0 to 82.6 | 7,820 tracts | ACS 2019-2023 tract population | USALEEP life expectancy |   |
| le_d10 | 74.0 | years of life expectancy at birth | population-weighted mean of tract life expectancy in a tenth of tracts (rank bins of the ADI; tracts with tied ranks fall in the same tenth), bootstrap interval over counties | residents of tracts in the most deprived tenth of tracts by ADI national percentile | deaths in 2010 to 2015 (USALEEP, area-weighted onto 2020 tracts); ADI 2023; ACS 2019-2023 population | 95% CI 73.7 to 74.3 | 7,844 tracts | ACS 2019-2023 tract population | USALEEP life expectancy |   |
| le_decile_drop | 8.3 | years of life expectancy at birth lower in the most deprived tenth of tracts | difference between the population-weighted mean life expectancy of the least and the most deprived tenth of tracts, bootstrap interval over counties (draws shared by the two means) | residents of non-institutional tracts in the 50 states and DC with a life expectancy estimate and an ADI rank | deaths in 2010 to 2015 (USALEEP, area-weighted onto 2020 tracts); ADI 2023; ACS 2019-2023 population | 95% CI 7.9 to 8.7 | 7,844 tracts | ACS 2019-2023 tract population | USALEEP life expectancy |   |

## Definitions

- Census tract: A small area drawn by the Census Bureau to stand in for a neighborhood. Boundaries are redrawn after each decennial census.
- 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.
- Modeled estimate: A figure produced by a statistical model instead of a direct count or measurement, usually for small areas where direct data are thin, borrowing strength from surveys, neighboring areas or other data. Neighboring areas can share errors, so single extremes call for caution.
- Ecological inference: Drawing conclusions about individuals from data about places or groups. A pattern across counties need not hold for the people inside them.

## Methods

This introduction computes nothing. Each number it prints is copied, with its population, period, weights and interval, from the chapter that estimates it, and the comparisons come from different sources, units and years.

### Where the numbers come from

Low birthweight by deprivation tenth covers live births in 2018 to 2024 in the counties that CDC WONDER names individually, those of 100,000 residents or more, and the comparison by mother's race uses County Health Rankings rates for births in 2016 to 2022 (Birthweight and preterm birth).

Life expectancy at birth is the USALEEP estimate for deaths in 2010 to 2015, averaged with population weights over tenths of non-institutional census tracts, with an interval from a bootstrap over counties (Place and the length of a life).

The housing cost burden is the share of renter households whose housing costs exceed the stated share of income, from HUD's tabulation of the American Community Survey for 2018 to 2022, pooled over tracts in each tenth, with low-income households defined against HUD's area median family income (Renting, affordability and eviction).

### Rankings and periods

Every comparison ranks places on the 2023 Area Deprivation Index, built on the American Community Survey for 2019 to 2023. Births are ranked by county and the other comparisons by census tract, so the tenths are different sets of places, and the outcome periods differ from one another and from the period of the index.

## What these data cannot show

Most of the book's own analyses describe places. People differ in where they live, and places differ in who lives in them. Comparing more similar places or groups narrows an explanation without ruling out every alternative. A relationship between neighborhood conditions and an outcome does not show what would happen to a person who moved or what a policy would change. Studies with experiments or other stated designs bear on those questions, and the book reports them separately, for the populations, programs and outcomes they studied.

The numbers in this introduction come from different units, sources and years. Births are compared across counties for 2018 to 2024, and for 2016 to 2022 in the comparison by mother's race. Deaths are compared across tracts for 2010 to 2015, and housing costs across tracts for 2018 to 2022. Each is ranked on a deprivation index for 2019 to 2023. They are not measurements of the same people. Some places and groups are missing from the records, some values are withheld, some estimates come from models or from data collected years apart, and several chapters describe cohorts born decades ago and not conditions today. Each chapter states these limits because they decide which comparisons are informative and which questions stay open.

## References

1. Arias, Elizabeth; Escobedo, Luis A.; Kennedy, Jiaquan; Fu, Chenxi; Cisewski, Jodi (2018). U.S. Small-area Life Expectancy Estimates Project: Methodology and Results Summary. Vital and Health Statistics, Series 2, Number 181, National Center for Health Statistics. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_02/sr02_181.pdf
2. Kind, Amy J. H.; Buckingham, William R. (2018). Making Neighborhood-Disadvantage Metrics Accessible: The Neighborhood Atlas. New England Journal of Medicine 378(26): 2456-2458. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp1802313
3. Greenlund, Kurt J.; Lu, Hua; Wang, Yan; Matthews, Kevin A.; LeClercq, Jennifer M.; Lee, Benjamin; Carlson, Susan A. (2022). PLACES: Local Data for Better Health. Preventing Chronic Disease 19: 210459. https://doi.org/10.5888/pcd19.210459

## Provenance

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- Built on: 2026-10-11
- Site commit: c2b1ff3309cb4a10833f884da91ac0057a66ad0a

Inputs:

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## Machine formats

- Report (HTML): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/place-across-an-american-life/report
- Report (Markdown): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/place-across-an-american-life/report.md
- Every estimate (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/place-across-an-american-life/facts.json
- Table 1, figure "ends_vs_us" (JSON): https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/report/place-across-an-american-life/figures/ends_vs_us.json
- Index of every report: https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/llms.txt; all reports in one file: https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/llms-full.txt