ZIP Code DestinyGrowing up4 of 19

Scene 4 of 19, Babies in more deprived counties are more often born small or early. Step 1 of 2, County by county.

Counties large enough for CDC WONDER to name, weighted by births

Babies in more deprived counties are more often born small or early

Across 578 large counties the low-birthweight share moves with the deprivation rank, a correlation of 0.52

  • Dot area: births, 2018 to 202469,000240,000690,000

Scenes

Where the comparison starts

  1. Life expectancy falls with each step toward more deprived neighborhoods
  2. Inside each New York borough, neighborhoods differ widely in life expectancy
  3. Home values set most of the deprivation ranking

Growing up

  1. Babies in more deprived counties are more often born small or early
  2. Test scores rise with county income, and gaps between groups remain inside districts
  3. Black and white children raised in the same neighborhood reach different adult incomes
  4. Former students of for-profit colleges earn the least a decade after entry

Adult life

  1. Where local jobs are scarce, residents hold better-paid jobs than the county offers
  2. Whether rent burden rises with deprivation depends on the comparison
  3. More deprived places have less traffic pollution nationally, but more within their own county
  4. Young adults report more distress than a decade ago, and the top income bracket the least at every age
  5. Smoking falls as income rises, while binge drinking climbs
  6. People rate their lives lowest in midlife, while stress declines with age

Reading the patterns

  1. The most deprived places usually stand farther from the national value than the least deprived
  2. Neighborhoods a few kilometers apart can differ by years of life expectancy
  3. Most differences in life expectancy lie inside counties, not between them
  4. Neighborhood types line up on outcomes but blur into one another
  5. Mobility beyond what census measures predict clusters by region
  6. These comparisons describe places, not what moving would do

Read the bookExplore the figuresMethods

Babies in more deprived counties are more often born small or early

Scene 4 of 19, step 1 of 2: County by county. Counties large enough for CDC WONDER to name, weighted by births.

What to say

Smaller counties are not named in WONDER and are not in this ranking. The chapter has a separate panel for all counties with a published rate, from another source and period; show it only as a labeled comparison.

About the chart

Across 578 large counties the low-birthweight share moves with the deprivation rank, a correlation of 0.52

Dots drift up from left to right and the decile means follow them. Each dot is a county, with area in proportion to its births; the line plots the births-weighted share in each tenth of counties with a 95% interval from a bootstrap over counties.

  • The counties are the 578 that WONDER natality names individually (at least 100,000 residents), which hold 79.5% of births. WONDER pools the births of every other county in each state, so those counties are not in this figure.
  • A county's deprivation rank is the population-weighted mean of the Area Deprivation Index national ranks of its census tracts (1 is least deprived, 100 most), weighted by 2019-2023 tract population. Deciles hold equal numbers of these counties, so the most deprived tenth is relative to large counties and not to the nation.
  • WONDER withholds cells of 1 to 9 births. A withheld cell is missing: it is left out of both the count and the denominator. The birthweight cut has 11,250 withheld cells in these counties; at 9 births each they could hold at most 0.5% of births, so a pooled share could move by at most that many percentage points.
  • Decile means are births-weighted. Intervals are 95% intervals from a bootstrap over counties, described in the methods note. The rates pool births in 2018 to 2024.
  • The third tab uses County Health Rankings rates for every county with a published rate, not the WONDER counts, and deciles of all counties, so its most deprived tenth is made up of small counties.

Source

CDC WONDER natality, births in 2018-2024, and Area Deprivation Index 2023; full counts of births, county shares weighted by births (population-weighted); third tab: County Health Rankings 2024, births in 2016-2022, births-weighted (population-weighted)

Open in Chapter 2.1, Birthweight and preterm birthThe chapter’s report, with every estimate and table

Keys

Right, Space, Page Down
Next step, then the next scene
Left, Page Up
Previous step, then the previous scene
Home
First scene
O
Overview of the scenes
Click or tap
Next step; on the left fifth of the screen, the previous one
N
Notes: what to say, the chart’s caption and source, and the chapter
F
Fullscreen
Escape
Close a panel