Mortality rates are higher in rural areas than urban ones

For almost every cause of death, the death rate per 100,000 people is higher in rural communities than in urban ones. Male homicides and male drug overdoses are the exceptions.

Numbers are deaths per 100,000 people in 2023. Rural refers to nonmetropolitan counties. Urban refers to metropolitan counties. Mortality rates are age-adjusted to account for differences in the age profiles in rural and urban counties.
Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY-NDSource: Tim Slack and Shannon Monnat with data from U.S. Centers for Disease Control and PreventionGet the data Download imageCreated with Datawrapper