Health, poverty, library visits: How Columbus stacks up to its peer cities
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Despite a young population and high marks in education and cost of living, Central Ohio struggles with various health indicators and has high rates of poverty, a new Columbus Foundation report finds.
What they did: The foundation's annual "Benchmarking Central Ohio" report compared the Columbus metro area to 22 similar cities like Cincinnati, Indianapolis and San Diego.
Indicators that stand out:
🏥 Our health outcomes fare poorly, with high rates of obesity, diabetes, overdose deaths and infant mortality.
- We also rank below average in adults diagnosed with asthma and the number of days with good air quality.
🚨 Poverty remains a cause for concern, with 5% of our working-age residents living in poverty (the second-worst of cities studied).
👶 Columbus is younger than most other cities.
- Our median age (36) is significantly lower than Midwestern peers like Pittsburgh (43) and Cleveland (41).
🏳️🌈 Same-sex households are represented in Columbus at the highest rate of any Midwest city, and the seventh-highest of any city ranked.
- There are about 19 same-sex households for every 1,000 in our metro area.
📚 We're well-educated. Columbus has the sixth-highest rate of research doctoral degrees (excludes professional doctoral degrees, like those in medicine or law), the sixth-lowest dropout rate among teens aged 16-19 and the fifth-highest percentage of children aged 3-4 enrolled in school.
- At 3.6, we also take the second-most annual visits to the library.
🙋♀️ We're generous … to a point. Our residents volunteer more than in most cities, but donate less money to charitable causes.