Story at a glance
- San Francisco was ranked the healthiest city in the U.S. in a new WalletHub analysis.
- Brownsville, Texas came in last place in the ranking.
- San Francisco earned the title of healthiest city in part due to its population’s low obesity rate and easy access to green spaces.
Most Americans are unhealthy, but location matters when it comes to just how unhealthy.
A new WalletHub analysis of 182 of the largest cities in the U.S. and found that San Francisco, Calif. Is the healthiest city in the country.
WalletHub analysts compared the cities across four areas — healthcare, food, fitness and green space — to come up with their ranking.
Did all the people that had health problems get priced out of San Francisco due to medical bills?
Being a highly walkable city due to all of the public transportation options versus much of the rest of the country helps a lot too.
Folks have no idea how useful BART is until they try it and find they don’t need to drive a car in one of the hilliest cities in the country, which also makes biking tough. It’s a walkable city out of necessity.
It’s essentially a measure of income and race. San Francisco has high incomes, and high Asian population. Obviously richer people live longer, and Asians have lower rates of obesity and longer lives in average.
Brownsville is much poorer, and pretty much entirely Hispanic. Obesity and poverty rates probably much higher.
It seems like it was intentional by the authors not to control for it, which I think is fair depending on what you are trying to show, but it’s irresponsible not to mention it.
SF has healthcare for all residents.