813 urban US counties provide data on age-adjusted cancer and heart disease death rates from 2021 to 2023, matched with 2020 vehicle kilometers driven and other risk factors. The dataset was created by Leon Robertson and hosted on Harvard Dataverse to model the association between mortality, smoking, and motor vehicle emissions. Regression analysis from this data suggests 42% of deaths were associated with smoking and 27% with vehicle use as an emissions indicator.
Use Cases
- Modeling the association between vehicle emissions and mortality rates based on county-level vehicle kilometers driven.
- Estimating the potential reduction in cancer and heart disease deaths from reduced smoking prevalence.
- Analyzing the combined effect of air particulates (≤ 2.5PM), alcohol use, and demographics on public health outcomes.
- Comparing gender-specific mortality patterns in relation to known risk factors across urban areas.
Strengths
- Covers 813 urban US counties, providing a substantial geographic scope.
- Includes age-adjusted mortality rates for 2021-2023, controlling for population age structure.
- Integrates multiple known risk factors (smoking, alcohol, PM2.5, demographics) for a multivariate analysis.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the selection of urban counties.
Provenance
- Source
- Harvard Dataverse, author Leon Robertson.
- Collection Method
- Data on vehicle kilometers driven from 2020 were matched to age-adjusted mortality rates and risk factor percentages, analyzed via least-squares regression.
- Time Range
- Mortality data from 2021-2023, matched with 2020 vehicle data.
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-05-28 03:11:32; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- 813 urban counties in the United States.