Veteran Livability Index
A county-level map of where the numbers actually live.
Most public reporting on veteran outcomes stops at the state line. The veteran in a rural county does not see the same labor market, the same housing cost, or the same VA access as the veteran in the capital — yet state-level dashboards average them into a single number. This tool pushes the resolution down to the county and lets you compare side by side.
What this is, and what it is not
The Veteran Livability Index is a self-contained, interactive map of veteran-relevant outcomes for every U.S. county. You can color the map by livability composite, veteran unemployment, cost of living, VA disability purchasing power, median home value, or the veteran share of the adult population. Click into any state to drill to its counties, click a county to read its full profile, and use the VA disability calculator to model how the federal compensation rate translates into local purchasing power.
The tool is not an officially sanctioned federal index. The composite livability score is a transparent z-score blend of five components, fully documented inside the tool's methodology panel and in the audit workbook below. Anyone replicating the build can reproduce the score from the published source data.
Where federal data does not publish at the county grain — cost of living and veteran unemployment, in particular — the tool inherits the state value to the county and flags it. It does not invent county-level numbers that the source agencies do not produce. Anyone claiming a county-level veteran unemployment rate is fabricating it.
Built for veterans, advocates, and analysts.
Four use cases the tool is engineered to support — with the same evidence that drives them.
Relocation comparison
You're separating, retiring, or moving for family. Compare two or three counties side by side on cost of living, employment, housing, and the local veteran population density. The map shows the tradeoffs you would otherwise have to assemble manually.
VA benefits planning
The VA disability compensation rate is national, but its purchasing power is not. The built-in calculator shows what your monthly compensation buys in a given county after Regional Price Parity adjustment — useful when modeling a fixed-income move.
Job-market context
State-level veteran unemployment and county-level overall employment together give a useful read on the regional labor market. The tool surfaces both, flags the inheritance, and shows the median income and home value for the same geography.
Employer and policy research
HR teams targeting veteran hires, county economic-development offices, and veteran-services nonprofits can use the same map to answer: where do post-9/11 veterans cluster, where do they earn more or less than the general population, where is housing within reach.
Four moves to get the answer you came for.
The tool is designed to work without a manual. These four moves cover roughly ninety percent of what people use it for.
Pick a metric
Use the toggle row above the national map to color states by livability score, vet unemployment, cost of living, VA real value, median home, or vet share of population.
Click a state
The state expands into its counties. The same metric coloring carries through. Hover any county for a quick tooltip; click for the full profile card.
Read the profile
Each county shows veteran population, share of adults, median income, employment, poverty rate, housing values, and the inherited state-level cost-of-living and veteran unemployment numbers — with flags.
Run the VA calculator
Enter a VA disability rating in the calculator panel. The tool returns the 2026 compensation rate, the local Regional Price Parity factor, and the resulting county-level real purchasing power.
The tool labels every metric as live (county-level federal data), state-inherited (state value applied to all counties because the federal series does not publish at the county grain), or SYNTH proxy (best-available stand-in until the live API is online). Always read the flag before drawing a conclusion.
Veteran Livability Index — interactive map.
Loads inline. No signup, no tracking. The standalone version below makes zero outbound network calls after the page loads.
The map switches to a single-column layout below 900px. The full-screen version (button above) tends to read better on a phone than the embedded version on this page.
Every number, attributed.
Five federal sources, one geometry library, all public domain. The tool ships with its full source table inside the methodology panel; this is the short version.
| Source | What it provides | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year Estimates 2023 |
Veteran population, vet share of adults, median income, employment, poverty, median home value, median rent | LIVE · County |
| Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities, State 2023 |
Cost-of-living index used to translate national VA compensation into local real value | STATE → COUNTY |
| Bureau of Labor Statistics Vet Employment Situation 2025 |
Veteran unemployment rate (annual average). BLS does not publish a county-level vet series. | STATE → COUNTY |
| U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs 38 CFR 3.4 · 2026 rates |
Disability compensation rate table used in the local-purchasing-power calculator | LIVE · National |
| VA Office of Public Affairs VAMC count, September 2025 |
Count of VA medical centers per state — SYNTH proxy until the VA Lighthouse Facilities API key is granted | SYNTH · State |
| us-atlas v3 (Mike Bostock, ISC license) | Pre-projected Albers USA TopoJSON for state and county boundaries — derived from Census TIGER/Line | Geometry |
About the composite score
The Veteran Livability Score is a z-score blend of five components: cost-burden-adjusted income, employment, housing affordability, veteran share, and inverse poverty. Each component is standardized across counties, weighted equally, and rescaled 0–100. Methodology is fully disclosed inside the tool's methodology panel and in the audit workbook (download below). It is a heuristic decision aid, not a federal benchmark.
It does not invent county-level veteran unemployment, because the federal series does not exist at that resolution. It does not aggregate personal data, run analytics, or set cookies. It does not claim to predict outcomes for individual veterans — only to show the regional context the federal data already supports.
Download and further reading.
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VLI Audit Workbook (.xlsx)The full per-county data table, methodology notes, source citations, and component-by-component composite breakdown. Useful if you want to verify the score yourself or extend the analysis.Download .xlsx
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Open in a new tabThe full interactive map, full-screen, in its own browser tab — useful when sharing a direct link or working without the page chrome. Same data, same calculator, same county drill-down.Open Full-Screen
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Veteran Regional Stability Index (VRSI)The companion case-study composite at the same county grain — eight federal sources, twenty KPIs, five domains. The full methodological treatment behind this lighter decision tool.Read VRSI Case Study
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Workforce Stability case studyThe flagship analytics case study — ACS PUMS-based, PWGTP-weighted, with an illustrative retention model and published model card.Read Case Study
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Analytics portfolioThe full set of shipped deliverables — case studies, dashboards, model cards, process improvement work.Back to Analytics
Built to be used, not to be admired.
This tool exists because veterans deserve the same county-level resolution that real-estate sites, employer-of-choice rankings, and political reporting already enjoy. The data is public. The code is public domain. If you find a number that looks wrong, an inheritance flag that needs correcting, or a use case the layout does not support — tell me. The next vintage will be better for it.