Methodology · component
Disability — how we measure it
One component of the ZipVitals Score. This page covers only this component — what it is built from, how those sources reach your ZIP, where they stop, and how it enters the composite. For the full recipe and the whole weight table, see the main methodology page.
Effective weight 0.0737 of the composite · higher = worse
Where this sits in the Score
The share of adults living with a disability, and the specific functional difficulties behind that share.
Feeds domain
Disability
0.0737
effective weight · nominal 0.07 · higher = worse
Disability is 1 of 9 scoring domains. Life expectancy is held out of the composite as an independent validator, so the nine renormalize to sum to 1.00 and this domain’s share lands at 0.0737.
It is built from a single source, listed below with what each one contributes and what it cannot tell you.
The sources feeding Disability
Each source is labeled with what kind of number it is — observed, model-based, or administrative — because a modeled risk surface and a counted facility are not the same kind of fact. We name which is which.
CDC PLACES — disability measures
Model-basedCDC
Adult prevalence of disability overall and by type — hearing, vision, cognition, mobility, self-care and independent living.
The honest limit: These are model-based estimates, not counts of people: CDC builds them from a national health survey combined with census demographics, so a figure here is a prediction for a place like this one. CDC publishes no age-adjusted version at ZIP level, so ours is crude — a ZIP with an older population reads higher partly because it is older. Disability prevalence rises steeply with age, so an older ZIP reads higher on this domain for reasons that have nothing to do with local conditions.
How these reach your ZIP
Every value is a fact about the ZIP itself. A source that is not published at ZIP level is rolled up against a published Census boundary file, weighted by population or land area as appropriate — never inherited from the county or state and rebranded as the ZIP’s. Where a legitimate ZIP value cannot be produced, the metric is shown as unavailable.
- CDC PLACES — disability measures
- Published by CDC at ZIP level. No rollup of ours is involved.
Coverage & limitations — for this component
This is the honest part. Every limit below is a published, named limit of this component specifically, so you can judge how far to trust one of its numbers. We treat limitations as a trust signal, not fine print.
What these numbers actually are
- Chronic disease, prevention, risk behavior, mental health, disability
- CDC PLACES estimates, not counts of people. CDC builds them from a national health survey combined with census demographics, so a prevalence here is a prediction for a place like this one — not a tally of who has the condition. CDC publishes no age-adjusted version at ZIP level, so ours is crude (see the collinearity note above). Resolution: Published by CDC at ZIP level. No rollup of ours is involved.
Where this component’s data stops
- Thin CDC PLACES coverage in PA & KY
- Mental-health and disability domains are absent and chronic-disease is reduced to a single measure — a real upstream CDC/BRFSS gap, and the only two states affected. lower-banded Confidence lowered; excluded from national listicles.
How it enters the Score
Every metric in this component goes through the same pipeline as the rest of the Score, then contributes to the Disability sub-score — which contributes its 0.0737 to the composite.
- Standardize. Each metric becomes a z-score against the national distribution of ZIP codes, so a concentration, a rate and a distance become comparable.
- Cap outliers. Each z-score is capped, so one extreme ZIP cannot dominate the scale.
- Build the sub-score. The capped metrics combine into the Disability sub-score, weighted by source and then equally within a source — so a source that publishes many metrics cannot swamp one that publishes few.
- Weight into the composite. Disability contributes 0.0737 to the domain-weighted sum, which is rescaled to the 0–100 Score.
Go deeper
This is one component of the method. Follow any of these for the whole picture, or for this component in context.