Table. Average Differencea Between City and County Estimates for 4 Public Health Metrics in Large US Cities Completely Contained in their Counties (N = 447b).
| Metric | Overall Metric Values |
City–county Pair Comparisons |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| City, Mean (SD) | County, Mean (SD) | Mean Differencec
(SD) |
Range | City–County Pairs with Meaningful Absolute Differenced
(> 5%) |
City–County Pairs with Meaningful Relative Differencee
(> 15%) |
|
| Cardiovascular disease deaths (per 100,000)f | 210.42 (58.79) | 180.27 (34.47) | 30.15 (46.68) | −39.10 to 268.80 | 380 (85.0%) | 250 (55.9%) |
| Children in poverty, no. (%)g | 23.49 (11.34) | 20.84 (7.08) | 2.65 (9.65) | −31.27 to 31.03 | 416 (93.0%) | 342 (76.5%) |
| Non-Hispanic Black, no. (%)g | 13.88 (15.51) | 11.43 (10.96) | 2.45 (10.43) | −35.17 to 56.30 | 422 (94.4%) | 366 (81.9%) |
| Life expectancy, yh | 78.95 (2.28) | 78.77 (2.00) | 0.18 (1.23) | −4.20 to 5.60 | 13 (2.9%) | 7 (1.6%) |
Differences are calculated for city–county pairs by subtracting the county value from the city value.
Cities of 66,000 or more as of 2010, wholly contained within their surrounding counties, plus 3 smaller cities to represent all states.
Paired sample t-tests for all metrics were significant at P < 0.01.
Absolute difference was calculated as the absolute value of the county value for a given metric subtracted from the city value, divided by the average of the city and county values and considered meaningful if the difference was > 5%.
Relative difference was calculated as the absolute value of the county value for a given metric subtracted from the city value, divided by the county value and considered meaningful if the difference was > 15%.
Analysis of city-level data cardiovascular disease death rates required restricted data, which were accessed through the National Vital Statistics System’s Research Data Center. The findings and conclusions in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Research Data Center, the National Center for Health Statistics, or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Children in Poverty and Percent Non-Hispanic Black were calculated using US Census, American Community Survey, 2017 5-year estimates (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs).
Average life expectancy estimates were provided by the US Small Area Life Expectancy Estimation Program (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/usaleep/usaleep.html).