Editor: Silvia Ascarelli
Development: Katie Marriner
Additional research: Erin Slowey

Sources: Most and least religious metro areas are based on the top and bottom quartile rankings of the 2010 Religion Census, conducted by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies.

Politics data from AP is based on the 2020 presidential election.

Population, median rent data, number of seniors, number of college graduates and rapid population growth is from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) 2015-2019 5-year estimates.

Cost of living is determined by the Commerce Department's regional price parities (RPP) of MSAs. A below-average cost of living is an MSA with an RPP of less than 100. If an MSA listed by OMB is not listed by the Commerce Department, non-metropolitan state-level price parity data is used. Unemployment figures are the median for 2019 by county from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Low overall tax burden" is defined by Tax Foundation.

Median home prices are calculated by Realtor, median rents are based on the Census's ACS 2015-2019 5-year estimates. Temperatures are the average maximum of all stations within a county using NOAA's 30-year (1991-2020) summaries. Due to rounding, display temperatures 0.5 degrees less than a lower range will round up to the next whole number. (An earlier version used the daily average.)

Summer humidity is the average dew point for the month of July for the years 1981-2010, calculated using data from the PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State.

Top cancer hospital data is from the National Cancer Institute. VA medical center data is from Veterans Affairs. Medicare-rated five-star hospital and nursing home data is from Medicare.gov. Medical and recreational marijuana laws are based on statewide legislation data from Norml. An above-average share of primary care physicians is based on the proportion of physicians to the population, compared with the national proportion and is calculated using county data from University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute County Health Rankings & Roadmaps 2020.

A county contains a national park, national forest or national wildlife refuge if the county's boundaries intersect with boundaries from the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service and the National Wildlife Refuge System, respectively.

Top-quality theaters are members of the League of Resident Theatres.

Brewery data is from the Brewers Association.

Bicycle Friendly Community data is provided by the League of American Bicyclists and includes only those designated at the silver or higher award level.

Natural disaster risk is from FEMA's National Risk Index and filters out those counties at "relatively high" or "very high" risk for individual hazards.

Universities offering special classes for those 50 and older are those with an Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

Unless previously noted, a county or MSA has an establishment (casino, airport, etc) if the U.S. Census's County Business Patterns (CBP) identifies at least one establishment exists within a county, according to 2018 data.

Icons from the Noun Project.