Identifying county characteristics associated with resident well-being: A population based study

Abstract

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’ wellbeing, 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 [