National Wellbeing Survey

The National Wellbeing Survey (NWS) is an annual geocoded cross-sectional survey of adults aged 18 to 64 living in the United States. The sample includes respondents from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The survey is designed to collect information on working-age adult wellbeing, broadly defined.

Specific survey domains include psychosocial wellbeing, social relationships and support, physical health, mental health, health behaviors, COVID-19 experiences and impacts, socioeconomic measures, political orientation, and demographic measures. The survey oversamples respondents from rural areas to enable robust rural-urban and within-rural analyses. The survey has been administered annually since 2021. The Principal Investigator (PI) is Shannon Monnat.

Acknowledgments

NWS data collection is supported by the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (U01DA055972). The following individuals have been involved in instrument development and/or data cleaning and preparation: Mariah Brennan, Austin Brown, Mary Helander, Shannon Monnat, Jennifer Karas Montez, Katie Mott, Claire Pendergrast, Alexandra Punch, Danielle Rhubart, Mary Kate Schutt, Stephanie Spera, Yue Sun, Emily Wiemers, Sean Withington, Douglas A. Wolf, Xiaoyan Zhang and Xue Zhang.

Accessing the Data

Data for 2021 are available via a data user agreement through ICPSR-NAHDAP.

Data for additional years will be made available through ICPSR when they are ready.

Self-Rated Physical Health Among Working-Aged Adults Along the Rural-Urban Continuum — United States, 2021

Danielle Rhubart, Shannon Monnat

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, February 2022

Shannon Monnat

Danielle Rhubart

Sociology Department

Aging Studies Institute

Center for Policy Research

Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health

Health Policy

Longevity

Social Justice

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report

Shannon Monnat

Danielle Rhubart

Self-rated physical health is strongly associated with morbidity and premature mortality. Decade-old studies report worse self-rated health among rural residents, but no recent reports exist on current rural-urban differences.

During 2021, working-aged adults in small/medium urban counties and rural counties reported worse physical health compared with residents of large urban counties. These differences are largely explained by differences in socioeconomic status (including lower educational attainment, household income, and probability of employment).

Policies addressing intersecting socioeconomic factors, including those that increase access to livable wage jobs, especially for those without a college degree, likely would reduce rural-urban health disparities.