Why Some Cities Are Healthier Than Others

Yesterday, I mapped the metro areas across the United States where smoking and obesity are the most and least prevalent. A great many studies have examined the health consequences of obesity and smoking and the characteristics of individuals who are most susceptible to them, but I wanted to better understand them geographically.

With the help of my Martin Prosperity Institute colleague Charlotta Mellander, I looked into the factors that might impact regional variations in smoking and obesity, such as income, education, and even the ways people commute to work. I should emphasize at the outset that our analysis only points to associations between variables. We do not make any claims about causation as other factors that we haven’t looked at might play an equal or even larger role. Nonetheless, the associations are intriguing and worth spelling out in some detail.