When deciding where to live, you might consider many factors: climate, proximity to loved ones, safety, school districts, and more. But there could be another feature to take into account: a city’s healthiness rating.
How long you live and how many years of good health you have are directly linked to where you live. A community's access to health care, proximity to green spaces, and availability of healthy food retailers factor into its rates of longevity, chronic diseases, and mental health conditions. Access to quality food, for example, makes healthy eating easier, while being surrounded by green spaces can help promote mental well-being and encourage outdoor physical activity.
If a city’s healthiness is a top priority for you, you can now take into account a ranking of America’s healthiest places to live, from research and data company Niche.
Using data from more than a dozen sources including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Census, and they're own surveys, Niche evaluated cities based on the following:
- Physical inactivity: The rate of adults (at the county level) who do not report any leisure-time physical activity.
- Obesity: The rate of adults (at the county level) who have a body mass index of 30 or higher.
- Access to doctors: The proximity (per square mile) to and the availability (per capita) of physicians’ offices.
- Access to mental health providers: A measure of both the proximity to (per square mile) and the availability (per capita) of mental health practitioners.
- Alcohol consumption: The rate of adults (at the county level) who report heavy drinking (a weekly average of eight or more drinks for women or 15 or more drinks for men) or binge drinking (consuming in a single occasion four or more drinks for women or five or more drinks for men in the last 30 days).
- Smoking: The rate of adults (at the county level) who smoke “most days.”
- Percentage of population under age 65 without health insurance.
- Drug-related deaths: Number of drug poisoning deaths per 100,000 population.
- Premature death rate: Years of potential life lost before age 75 per 100,000 population (age-adjusted).
Here is how the healthiness of America’s cities measured up.
10 healthiest places
- Berkeley, Calif.
- Cambridge, Mass.
- Irvine, Calif.
- Bellevue, Wash.
- Seattle, Wash.
- Torrance, Calif.
- San Francisco, Calif.
- Boulder, Colo.
- Pasadena, Calif.
- Sandy Springs, Ga.
Berkeley claims the top spot for the third year in a row, while Cambridge jumps up to the second spot from number five last year, and Irvine is bumped to three from second place in 2024.
Living a healthy lifestyle can be a financial burden, but Berkeley residents have a median household income of $108,558, according to the U.S. Census—which is over 25% more than the national median household income of $80,610.
Additionally, only 3.3% of Berkeley’s population does not have health insurance, compared to 9.5% across the U.S. And while the U.S. has an obesity rate of 40.3%, Berkeley’s is nearly half that, at 23.2%.
Residents also have ample opportunity to stay physically active: the Northern California city boasts over 50 parks, numerous gyms, and adult sport leagues.
For more on healthy living:
- America’s happiest city: Over 1,000 acres of parks, average temperatures in the 60s, and a bustling economy
- Finland is the world’s happiest country yet again. Here are the top 10 on the list
- The Fortune 50 Best Places to Live will serve multigenerational families for the long haul
- An essential predictor of happiness is often overlooked, according to a global study
