Data Source: Healthy Cities 2021 (PHW251B Dataset Week 6)
Background: This dashboard explores the Healthy Cities 2021 dataset, which ranks 44 major cities worldwide based on a combination of health, lifestyle, and environmental indicators. The dataset explores measures including (but not limited to) life expectancy, average annual hours worked, cost of water, outdoor activity, happiness level, and pollution scores. The data reflect the rankings as of 2021. The study population represented in the dataset consists of residents in large and influenial cities across North America, Asia, Europe, and other regions. The data are aggregated at the city, and do not represent individual-level outcomes. The guiding research question of this dashboard is: How do quality-of-life factors, such as happiness and work–life balance, vary across cities with different overall health rankings, and how are happiness levels are associated with life expectancy? By visualizing these relationships, we can explore patterns across cities and identify the health, occupational, and environmental indicators of higher-ranking healthy cities.
Results: Figure 1 illustrates city-level happiness scores alongside life expectancy. Overall, cities with higher happiness levels tend to exhibit longer life expectancy, which suggests a positive relationship between self-reported happiness scores and population health. We see greater variability in the lower-ranking cities. A few cities, namely Asian cities deviate from this general pattern who have lower self-reported happiness levels but relatively higher life expectancy, which suggests that there are other contextual factors that may contribute to their corresponding life expectancy. Figure 2 examines average annual hours worked between top-ranked and low-ranked healthy cities. Low-ranked cities showed generally higher hours worked and greater variability, compared to higher-ranked cities. These visualizations serve to indicate that generally, higher happiness levels and reduced working hours are common characteristics of healthier cities, and support the research objective of examining how quality-of-life factors relate to health outcomes.
The table below allows you to explore the full Healthy Cities 2021 dataset. You can sort, search, and export the data to examine city-level indicators in more detail.