Social vulnerability to disasters and Mobility score
Counting counties equally, Social vulnerability to disasters and Mobility score have a link of -0.10 across 1,986 counties, on a scale from −1 to +1. Giving bigger places more weight asks about the average resident rather than the average place, and it flips the link to +0.23. Neither figure is likely to be chance. So this is a real disagreement about who is being described.
Flips when bigger places count more
Every place, plotted
One dot for each place reporting both measures. Hover over or tap a dot to see its name and values. The thin line is the straight line that best fits the dots. The bold line, shown for counties, is the link after adjusting for density, income and education. A dot far from the lines is a place that does not follow the pattern.
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What each measure is
Social vulnerability to disasters
How hard a disaster is likely to hit the people who live here. Counties are ranked from 0 (least) to 100 (most). The rank is built from ten facts about homes in the Census Bureau's survey: low income, disability, no health insurance, age 65 or older, no car, no internet, crowded homes, no one with a job, trouble with English, and one or no adult to care for others. So it mostly repeats other survey measures on this site. It is not new proof about them. It says nothing about which hazards a place faces.
FEMA National Risk Index (Census and University of South Carolina indexes) · FEMA National Risk Index v1.20, NRI_Table_Counties, SOVI_SCORE
Mobility score
What happened to children raised poor in this county: their income rank as adults, and their chance of being locked up (flipped). Both describe children born around 1980. So this tells you about the county of forty years ago as much as the county today.
PlaceStats composite score · derived from 2 measures (OA)
Highest and lowest
Where each measure is highest and lowest among the places reporting both (2023), with the other measure beside it. This is shown for every size of place where both are published. Metro-area values are added up from their counties. A measure that cannot be added up across counties, such as a middle value (median), has no metro figure. Counts are shown per 1,000 residents, since raw totals would only list the largest places. Cities and towns and ZIP codes are shown where the Census survey or the CDC publishes them; most other sources stop at the county. They are shown for places of 5,000 residents or more, and only where the survey’s margin of error is small enough for the figure to be usable. The CDC publishes its health estimates for cities in a version adjusted for age, so places with older or younger people can be compared fairly, but not for ZIP codes.
Counties
By social vulnerability to disasters
| Social vulnerability to disasters | Mobility score | |
|---|---|---|
| Highest | ||
| Bethel Census Area, AK | 100 | -1.62 |
| Apache County, AZ | 99.8 | -0.422 |
| McKinley County, NM | 99.8 | -0.239 |
| Oglala Lakota County, SD | 99.7 | -4.13 |
| Bronx County, NY | 99.7 | 0.0803 |
| Lowest | ||
| Northeastern Connecticut Planning Region, CT | 10.6 | -0.201 |
| Park County, CO | 10.6 | -0.434 |
| Larimer County, CO | 10.6 | 0.0912 |
| Lake County, CO | 10.6 | -1.28 |
| El Paso County, CO | 10.6 | -0.473 |
By mobility score
| Social vulnerability to disasters | Mobility score | |
|---|---|---|
| Highest | ||
| Stark County, ND | 15.8 | 2.32 |
| O'Brien County, IA | 10.6 | 1.81 |
| Brown County, MN | 11.4 | 1.72 |
| Todd County, MN | 54.7 | 1.64 |
| Stearns County, MN | 24.1 | 1.62 |
| Lowest | ||
| Menominee County, WI | 94.1 | -4.31 |
| Oglala Lakota County, SD | 99.7 | -4.13 |
| Pulaski County, GA | 88.1 | -3.03 |
| Charlottesville city, VA | 16.6 | -2.7 |
| Richmond city, VA | 38.9 | -2.57 |
Metro areas — Social vulnerability to disasters is not published for metro areas
By mobility score
| Social vulnerability to disasters | Mobility score | |
|---|---|---|
| Highest | ||
| Dickinson, ND | — | 3.41 |
| New Ulm, MN | — | 2.43 |
| St. Cloud, MN | — | 2.19 |
| Alexandria, MN | — | 2.08 |
| Fergus Falls, MN | — | 2.06 |
| Lowest | ||
| Thomaston, GA | — | -2.62 |
| Savannah, GA | — | -2.19 |
| Arcadia, FL | — | -2.12 |
| Summerville, GA | — | -2.12 |
| Cordele, GA | — | -2.09 |
Counties furthest from the pattern
Compared with the straight line that best fits all 1,986 counties: the five with far more mobility score than their social vulnerability to disasters would suggest, and the five with far less.
| Social vulnerability to disasters | Mobility score | |
|---|---|---|
| Above the line | ||
| Stark County, ND | 15.8 | 2.32 |
| LaGrange County, IN | 99.2 | 1.52 |
| Todd County, MN | 54.7 | 1.64 |
| Wadena County, MN | 50.5 | 1.61 |
| O'Brien County, IA | 10.6 | 1.81 |
| Below the line | ||
| Menominee County, WI | 94.1 | -4.31 |
| Oglala Lakota County, SD | 99.7 | -4.13 |
| Charlottesville city, VA | 16.6 | -2.7 |
| Pulaski County, GA | 88.1 | -3.03 |
| Richmond city, VA | 38.9 | -2.57 |
Two series, one county
Both measures over time for a county you pick. The two charts are stacked, so they share only the years along the bottom. You can pick from the thirty largest counties reporting both. This panel covers 2010–2024, and a measure published only once shows as a single dot.
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Every version of the link
Each row measures the same link, from −1 to +1, in a different way. If the rows mostly agree, the link does not depend on one choice of method.
| Before adjusting for anything | -0.275 | 1,986 counties reporting both |
| After adjusting for density, income and education | -0.097 | the part of the link that is not just how urban, rich and educated a place is |
| Also adjusting for population size | -0.103 | size taken out as well as density |
| Also comparing only within each state | -0.012 | each county is compared only with others in its own state, so this is no longer a comparison between states |
| Also holding winter sunshine equal | -0.023 | compares counties that get the same sunlight in winter as well. If this is much weaker, part of the link is a difference between sunny and grey regions (more) |
| Giving bigger counties more weight | +0.227 | the adjusted link for the average resident rather than the average county. With this weighting, the data counts for about 266 equally weighted counties |
| Middle value inside single states | -0.109 | the link worked out inside each of 32 states with at least 20 counties reporting |
| Using ranks, after adjusting | -0.098 | uses each county’s rank, not its value, so a few extreme counties cannot create the link |
How much to believe it
Could it be chance?
The p-value is the chance of seeing a link this strong if there were really none. A value of 0.05 or less means the link is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 3.1e-16 means 0.00000000000000031, and the bigger the number after “e-”, the smaller the value. Treating every county as a separate case gives p = 1.5e-5. But counties in the same state tend to resemble each other, so the better figure allows for that: p = 0.049. The site tested 32,131 pairs, and testing so many turns up some flukes. The q-value allows for that too. For this pair it is 2.7e-5.
Do nearby places look alike?
Moran’s I measures how much nearby places look alike: 0 means no map pattern, and higher means neighbours are more similar. For the part of each county that the adjustment leaves unexplained, it is +0.48 (p = 0.001). That unexplained part still clusters on the map. So some regional factor shared by both measures is not accounted for.
Did they change together?
Not measurable: at least one of these is published for too few of the years a change needs (2014–2019 or 2019–2023), or for too few counties in both.
Related pairs
- Social vulnerability to disasters and Material security score — -0.53
- Economic connectedness and Mobility score — +0.48
- Share Black, not Hispanic and Mobility score — -0.44
- Child mortality and Mobility score — -0.43
- Life expectancy and Mobility score — +0.43
- Premature mortality and Mobility score — -0.43
- Years of potential life lost and Mobility score — -0.43
- Social vulnerability to disasters and Economic connectedness — -0.42
Association only. Nothing here shows that either measure changes the other. This describes counties, not the people in them. Two measures going together across places does not mean the same people have both. How the US county data works · Explore Social vulnerability to disasters and Mobility score