Pediatric poverty and county-level cardiovascular mortality in the United States: A national cross-sectional analysis

Background Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States, and marked geographic disparities in cardiovascular mortality persist. However, the community-level socioeconomic indicators most strongly associated with these disparities remain unclear. Community-level measures capture the social and economic conditions that influence cardiovascular health across populations and may help identify communities at greatest risk. We used the Area Health Resources File (AHRF) to identify socioeconomic measures most strongly associated with county-level cardiovascular mortality. Methods We performed a national cross-sectional ecological analysis using the 2024–2025 Area Health Resources File (AHRF), including counties in the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The primary outcome was an AHRF-defined cardiovascular mortality composite derived from 2021–2023 National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) mortality data. Community-level socioeconomic measures included 2023 overall, pediatric, and family childhood poverty and 2019–2023 overall, female, and White unemployment. County-level associations were evaluated using Spearman rank correlation and regional differences using the Kruskal–Wallis test. Sensitivity analyses used a partial mortality composite and Kendall τ correlation. Results Among 1,982 counties, cardiovascular mortality varied significantly across U.S. Census divisions (P<0.001), with the highest population-weighted rate in the East South Central division (348.5 deaths/100,000) and the lowest in the Mountain division (233.9 deaths/100,000). Pediatric poverty demonstrated the strongest association with cardiovascular mortality (ρ=0.612), followed by family childhood poverty (ρ=0.603) and overall poverty (ρ=0.524; all P<0.001). In contrast, unemployment measures were more weakly associated (overall ρ=0.209, White ρ=0.176, female ρ=0.141; all P<0.001). Results were consistent in sensitivity analyses. Conclusions County-level poverty, particularly pediatric poverty, was more strongly associated with cardiovascular mortality than unemployment across U.S. counties. These findings suggest pediatric poverty may serve as a useful community-level indicator for identifying populations at increased cardiovascular risk and prioritizing future public health interventions.