What Americans Value — by County

Where you live shapes what you value — and what you value shapes where you live. The two are deeply entangled. Counties with strong religious identity look different from counties with high education rates, which look different again from counties where physical fitness and outdoor culture dominate.

The map below draws on Census Bureau data, CDC PLACES, and Pew Research to visualize nine dimensions of American values and social character at the county level. Use the dropdown to explore each one.

A few things stand out when you move through the dimensions.

Family and religion cluster together in the South and interior West. Counties with high rates of married-couple households and children also tend to score high on religious importance. Utah’s counties are a consistent outlier — high family orientation, high marriage rates, low divorce, and high religious importance all at once.

Education and fitness point in opposite directions geographically. College attainment is concentrated in metro areas — especially university towns and coastal cities. Physical fitness (measured by low inactivity rates) is strongest in the mountain West and upper Midwest, not in the same places. You can be educated and sedentary, or active and have low educational attainment — the two don’t track together the way people assume.

Divorce rates and marriage rates are not simply inverses. Some counties have both high current-marriage rates and high divorce rates — suggesting high rates of remarriage rather than lifetime singlehood. Nevada counties, unsurprisingly, dominate the divorce map due to its historically permissive divorce laws attracting out-of-state filers.

Mortgage burden reveals a different affordability map. High mortgage burden isn’t just a coastal story — rural counties in the South and Appalachia also show elevated cost burden, often because incomes are low rather than because home prices are high. The distinction matters: coastal burden reflects expensive markets, rural burden often reflects poverty.

Homeownership is highest in the rural Midwest and South. The counties with the highest ownership rates are largely rural, with cheap housing and stable long-term populations. Urban areas — and particularly high-cost metros — have the lowest homeownership, driven by price barriers and a younger, more mobile population.