[jawns]

These results are pretty much exactly what you would expect -- people who are struggling aren't likely to be googling for luxury items -- and I would venture to guess that they would be fairly similar even if The Upshot used only income, or only education level, rather than a blend of six metrics, to determine "hard" and "easy" counties to live in.

What I find especially intriguing are some of the explanations Leonhardt posits, which presume a causal link and attempt to suggest what that cause is. That's part of the reason why I enjoy running Correlated.org -- it's fun to try to guess what the connection might be between two seemingly unrelated things.

But let's remember: Not all correlations entail a causal link. (I prefer that way of putting it over "Correlation does not imply causation," because correlation does imply causation ... it's just that it often wrongly implies it.)

[autokad]

i hate county level data like this, though they did address that they basically had no choice.

I'm not sure you can consider obesity as part of 'a hard place to live'. thats an action an individual chooses regardless of geography. You could argue that poor people have no choice, they are obese because they are poor for example, but that would be like double counting income if they are highly correlated.

income is also tricky since taxes and costs of living has a huge effect. this could possibly explain why the places to live shown are largely opposite to most 'happiness' indicators that I have seen. at least looking at its map: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/upshot/where-are-the-harde...