Open AccessIdentifying county characteristics associated with resident well-being: A population based study
Author(s) -
Brita Roy,
Carley Riley,
Jeph Herrin,
Erica S. Spatz,
Anita Arora,
Kenneth P. Kell,
John Welsh,
Elizabeth Y. Rula,
Harlan M. Krumholz
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0196720
Subject(s) - poverty , gerontology , socioeconomic status , population , medicine , demography , public health , educational attainment , well being , environmental health , psychology , nursing , psychotherapist , sociology , economics , economic growth
Background Well-being is a positively-framed, holistic assessment of health and quality of life that is associated with longevity and better health outcomes. We aimed to identify county attributes that are independently associated with a comprehensive, multi-dimensional assessment of individual well-being. Methods We performed a cross-sectional study examining associations between 77 pre-specified county attributes and a multi-dimensional assessment of individual US residents’ well-being, captured by the Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index. Our cohort included 338,846 survey participants, randomly sampled from 3,118 US counties or county equivalents. Findings We identified twelve county-level factors that were independently associated with individual well-being scores. Together, these twelve factors explained 91% of the variance in individual well-being scores, and they represent four conceptually distinct categories: demographic (% black); social and economic (child poverty, education level [