Table 1.
City-level dataset. List of variables considered in the current study for city-level analyses, together with their acronyms, the levels attainable by each variable, and data source.
Table 2.
Individual-level dataset. List of variables considered in the current study for individual-level analyses, together with their acronyms, the levels attainable by each variable. This dataset is obtained from the 2021 National Survey of Children’s Health [68], a nationwide survey that screens households with children under 18 years of age.
Fig 1.
Urban scaling results for 915 cities in the United States of America.
As a function of the city population, dots identify the number of (A) adults living with obesity in 2015, (B) children with a diagnosis of ADHD in 2016-2018, (C) adults who reported no leisure-time physical activity in 2015, (D) mental health providers in 2015, (E) adults with some post-secondary education in 2015, and (F) food-insecurity in 2015. The dashed line in each plot represents linear scaling and insets show corresponding per-capita metrics.
Fig 2.
Mappings inequalities for 49 states in the United States (except for Connecticut).
Maps among six urban features for 915 cities, measured by Gini coefficients: prevalence of adult obesity, ADHD in children, adult physical inactivity, mental health providers, college education, and food insecurity. The scale of Gini coefficients is from 0 to 1. The USA census shape files [77] were used to create these maps.
Fig 3.
Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) established from the study city- and individual-level data.
(A) DAG among six urban features for 915 cities, measured by Fisher’s z score: prevalence of adult obesity (OB), ADHD in children (ADHD), adult physical inactivity (PI), mental health providers (MHP), food insecurity in children (FI), and college education (CE). (B) DAG among the six individual features for 19,333 children, measured by Spearman-ranked correlation: body mass index (BMI), number of days per week the child does physical activities for over 60 minutes (PA), severity of current ADHD conditions (SEV), use of mental health care services (UMH), food insufficiency (FINS), and adult education (EDU). Red (blue) arrows indicate positive (negative) association.