ZIP Code DestinyWhere the comparison starts2 of 19

Scene 2 of 19, Inside each New York borough, neighborhoods differ widely in life expectancy. Step 1 of 1, New York City.

Census tracts of New York City

Inside each New York borough, neighborhoods differ widely in life expectancy

Within every New York City borough, the 5th to 95th percentile of tract life expectancy spans at least 9.3 years, while the borough means lie within 4.2 years of one another

Loading tract outlines

Life expectancy at birth (years), deaths in 2010 to 2015

Lower life expectancyHigher life expectancy

No data (0 tracts)

Select a class to show only those places.

Hover or tap a tract for its value, or search by name. Zoom with the buttons on the map, then drag to move it.

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

Inside each New York borough, neighborhoods differ widely in life expectancy

Scene 2 of 19. Census tracts of New York City.

What to say

The map shows modeled estimates for tracts. A single tract is not a representative neighborhood and says nothing about the prognosis of a person who lives there. The color scale is fixed, so the boroughs can be compared on it.

About the chart

Within every New York City borough, the 5th to 95th percentile of tract life expectancy spans at least 9.3 years, while the borough means lie within 4.2 years of one another

Tracts in several classes of the key appear inside every borough: the tracts of each span at least 9.3 years between the 5th and 95th percentile, 6.9 years net of estimation error, and the five borough means lie within 4.2 years of one another. Each tract is shaded by a modeled estimate with a median standard error of 2.0 years, so part of every difference between shades is estimation error; the tooltip gives the 95% interval, the standard error and the ADI national percentile. Gray tracts have no value, and the tooltip says why.

  • The unit is the 2020 census tract. Life expectancy is the USALEEP estimate for deaths in 2010 to 2015, which the National Center for Health Statistics built on 2010 tracts and which is area-weighted onto 2020 tracts here, so the estimate for a 2020 tract blends the 2010 tracts that overlap it and its standard error is mapping grade, which understates the error. Every shade is a modeled estimate with a standard error (the median is 2.0 years), and the interval in the tooltip is a normal-approximation 95% interval built from the standard error.
  • Taking the published standard errors at face value, estimation error makes up 37% of the variance of these estimates. If the errors of neighboring tracts are independent, the difference between two neighbors carries the sum of their error variances, so a map of noisy estimates exaggerates the contrast between neighbors. That is why the pairs figure chooses its pairs on the ADI, which shares no sampling error with life expectancy. This map marks no tract.
  • 2,074 tracts are shaded: the non-institutional tracts of the five counties of New York City (Bronx, Kings, New York, Queens and Richmond) that have a life expectancy estimate, an ACS 2019-2023 population above zero and an ADI rank, which is the sample of the gradient. 250 are gray because the tract has no residents in the survey, no published estimate, an institutional population or no ADI rank; the tooltip names which.
  • Ranges are population-weighted 5th and 95th percentiles of tract estimates, and borough means are population-weighted. A range of tract estimates and a spread of borough means are not the same kind of contrast, and the range includes estimation error. The range net of error shrinks each tract estimate toward its borough mean by the square root of one minus the borough's share of variance that is estimation error, as in the county spread figure, and is an upper bound because the 2020-tract errors are mapping grade.

Source

USALEEP life expectancy at birth, 2010-2015, area-weighted onto 2020 tracts; Area Deprivation Index, 2023; ACS 2019-2023 population; population-weighted ranges; modeled estimates

Open in Chapter 8.4, Place and the length of a lifeThe chapter’s report, with every estimate and table

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