Built to be cited

Live or Die Here compares the 50 states, DC and 5 territories, and 3,143 counties, on what decides a move: income, property, sales, estate and retirement taxes, gun and abortion and cannabis law, crime, healthcare, schools, housing, cost of living, climate and disaster risk. State figures come from state revenue departments, Tax Foundation, FBI, CMS, NCES and the other sources named on each state page. County figures come from Census ACS, BLS, County Health Rankings, Zillow, NOAA, FEMA, Ookla, OpenElections and the rest of the source list, held in a county database with 213 fields, each tagged with the source and vintage it came from. Nothing is estimated to fill a gap: a county missing a figure shows no figure.

How to cite a figure

Cite the page, not the site. Each of these URL patterns is stable and server-rendered, so the sentence you quote is in the HTML.

• https://liveordiehere.com/[state-slug], e.g. /texas. Taxes, laws and quality-of-life figures for one state.
• https://liveordiehere.com/[state-slug]/counties/[county-slug], e.g. /texas/counties/harris. One county, with prose ranked against every other county.
• https://liveordiehere.com/compare/[a]-vs-[b] with the two state slugs in alphabetical order, e.g. /compare/florida-vs-texas.
• https://liveordiehere.com/hubs/[slug], a ranked county list that answers one question; the list is below.
• https://liveordiehere.com/draw/[fips], one county told as a story on a single shareable page, the same prose as the county profile.
• https://liveordiehere.com/blog/[slug], articles written from the site’s own data.

The conventions

• Data as of. Articles published from September 2026 end with a Sources list and a line reading Data as of <Month Year>, matching the newest source used; the byline repeats it. The retirement-taxes page carries the same line. Quote that date with the figure.
• Sources. Hub pages end with a Sources: line naming each dataset and stating that the table is recomputed from the county database every day. County profiles print the source under each metric and a data-vintage footer. Compare pages carry Article structured data with temporalCoverage.
• The year in the sentence. Computed prose names the source and its year inside the sentence, for example “(Zillow 2024)” or “(County Health Rankings 2024)”, so a quoted sentence carries its own citation. Keep the parenthetical when you quote.
• A citation that works. Live or Die Here, page title, the Data as of date or the year in the sentence, and the URL. Free to use with a link to liveordiehere.com.

Pages that answer a question in one sentence

These pages open with the answer, computed from the data, and then show the table behind it.

County rankings

The first sentence of each of the 13 hubs names the rank-one county, its figure, the population floor and the source. Recomputed daily.

• The cheapest counties in America to buy a home (with at least 50,000 people)
• The safest large counties in America (100,000 people or more)
• The best counties for remote workers: fast internet, sane home prices
• The counties with the lowest property taxes (50,000 people or more)
• Warm counties you can still afford: 65°F average and a median home under $350K
• The counties with the most doctors per person
• The fastest-growing counties in America
• The most conservative large counties in America (250,000 people or more)
• The most liberal large counties in America (250,000 people or more)
• The large counties least likely to flood, burn or blow away
• The counties where students test highest
• The sunniest counties in America in January (50,000 people or more)
• The mildest-climate counties: 58 to 72°F average and the fewest severe storms

State answers

• /best-weather-states: the first sentence names the state with the best year-round weather by the numbers, its average temperature, January-sun rank and severe storm events a year, from NOAA, USDA and FEMA county data rolled up to states.
• /retirement-taxes: which states tax Social Security, pensions and 401(k) or IRA withdrawals, which have estate or inheritance taxes, and what a retiree pays, in one table for 2026, with a Data as of line.
• Compare pages: the h1 is the headline and the bold sentence under it is the verdict, computed from the two states’ own figures. Sections follow, then an FAQ marked up as FAQPage whose first question is “Is A or B better to live in?”

County profiles

Each county profile at /[state]/counties/[county] opens with prose under h2 headings written from that county’s figures and ranked against every other county that reports the same figure, as percentiles. Missing figures are left out rather than guessed. The metric grid below the prose prints the source under each number. The same prose stands alone at /draw/[fips], and /draw lands on a random county at the odds an American actually lives there.

Two pages are tools rather than citation targets: the county map, which filters all counties by ranges on the same fields, and the county cost of living calculator. Both load their data in the browser from the API below, so cite the API or a hub instead.

The API

Base URL https://liveordiehere.com/api/v1. Read-only JSON, no key, no account. The machine-readable description is at /api/v1/openapi.json (OpenAPI 3.1, including the full 213-field county catalog with a source for each field), and the plain-text summary for language models is at /llms.txt. Free to use with a link to liveordiehere.com.

County fields are camelCase keys in 22 sections (economy, housing, market, education, safety, health, lifestyle, childcare, climate, internet, commute, migration, mobility, civic, agriculture, ev, recreation, breweries, debt, innovation, politics, ai). A value is a number or null; null means the source does not report it for that county. The filter endpoint is the exception: it takes snake_case source slugs and is rate limited because it queries upstream on every call.

GET https://liveordiehere.com/api/v1

{
  "version": "1.0",
  "endpoints": {
    "county": "/api/v1/county/[fips]",
    "state": "/api/v1/state/[abbr]"
  }
}

GET https://liveordiehere.com/api/v1/county/48201

{
  "fips": "48201",
  "name": "Harris County, Texas",
  "stateName": <string or null>,
  "data": {
    "medianIncome": <number or null>,
    "homeValue": <number or null>,
    "propertyTaxRate": <number or null>,
    "crimeRate": <number or null>,
    "lifeExpectancy": <number or null>,
    ... one key per field in the catalog, 213 in all
  },
  "zillow": {
    "zhvi": <number or null>, "zori": <number or null>, "medianSalePrice": <number or null>,
    "inventory": <number or null>, "newListings": <number or null>, "priceCutPct": <number or null>,
    "saleToList": <number or null>, "pctSoldAboveList": <number or null>, "daysToClose": <number or null>
  },
  "meta": { "sources": ["dataspine", "zillow_db"], "fetchedAt": "<ISO timestamp>", "fips": "48201" }
}

GET https://liveordiehere.com/api/v1/county/all?fields=medianIncome,homeValue

{
  "count": <integer>,
  "fips": ["01001", "01003", ...],
  "names": ["Autauga County", "Baldwin County", ...],
  "states": ["AL", "AL", ...],
  "population": [<number or null>, ...],
  "columns": {
    "medianIncome": [<number or null>, ...],
    "homeValue": [<number or null>, ...]
  }
}

GET https://liveordiehere.com/api/v1/county/by-state/48

{
  "counties": [
    {
      "fips": "48001",
      "geoId": "<upstream id>",
      "name": "Anderson County, Texas",
      "stateName": "Texas",
      "stateAbbr": "TX",
      "data": { "medianIncome": <number or null>, ... },
      "population": <integer or null>,
      "ingestedAt": "<ISO timestamp>"
    },
    ...
  ],
  "count": <integer>
}

POST https://liveordiehere.com/api/v1/county/filter
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "filters": [{ "attribute": "chr_life_expectancy", "operator": "gte", "value": 80 }],
  "stateFips": "48",
  "slugs": ["chr_life_expectancy", "median_household_income"],
  "limit": 25
}

{
  "count": <integer>,
  "filters": [{ "attribute": "chr_life_expectancy", "operator": "gte", "value": 80 }],
  "stateFips": "48",
  "results": [
    {
      "fips": "<upstream geo id>",
      "name": "<county name>",
      "stateFips": "48",
      "population": <integer or null>,
      "data": { "chr_life_expectancy": <number or null>, "median_household_income": <number or null> }
    },
    ...
  ]
}

GET https://liveordiehere.com/api/v1/state/TX

{
  "abbr": "TX",
  "name": "Texas",
  "slug": "texas",
  "staticData": {
    "incomeTax": { "hasIncomeTax": false, "type": "none", "topRate": 0 },
    "propertyTax": { "effectiveRate": <number> },
    "salesTax": { "stateRate": <number>, "avgCombined": <number> },
    "retirement": { "socialSecurityTaxed": <boolean>, "pensionExempt": "full" | "partial" | "none" },
    "estateTax": { "hasEstateTax": <boolean>, "hasInheritanceTax": <boolean> },
    "capitalGains": { "taxedAsIncome": <boolean> },
    "politics": { "lean": "R" | "D" | "swing", "margin2024": <number> },
    "gunLaws": { "grade": "<letter>", "permitToPurchase": <boolean>, "carryPermit": "permitless" | "shall-issue" | "may-issue" },
    "costOfLiving": { "index": <number, 100 = US average> },
    "crime": { ... }, "healthcare": { ... }, "education": { ... }, "housing": { ... }, ...
  },
  "attrs": { "graduationRate": <number or null>, "electricityRate": <number or null>, ... 26 keys } | null,
  "meta": { "sources": ["static", "dataspine_profile", "dataspine_attrs"], "fetchedAt": "<ISO timestamp>" }
}

Crawling

• robots.txt allows every crawler on every public page, with explicit allow blocks for GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Bingbot, Applebot-Extended and CCBot so the policy is unambiguous. Only /admin/ and /api/admin/ are disallowed.
• The sitemap is at https://liveordiehere.com/sitemap.xml and lists every state, county, compare, hub and article page with a true last-modified date.
• An IndexNow key file is published at the site root, and article URLs are submitted to IndexNow when they publish or change.
• Pages are server-rendered. The figures, the prose and the JSON-LD are in the HTML response; no JavaScript is needed to read them. The map and the calculators are interactive and load their data in the browser from the API.

The MCP server

The same data as six tools for AI assistants, at https://liveordiehere.com/mcp. Streamable HTTP, no key, no session. Point any MCP client at that URL. In Claude Code: claude mcp add --transport http live-or-die-here https://liveordiehere.com/mcp.

• list_fields: the 213-field county catalog with label, section, unit and source. Filter by a word or a section.
• search_counties: county name or part of one, optional state, largest first. Turns “Harris County, Texas” into 48201.
• get_county: one county by FIPS: every field, the change since the previous data release where there is one, the sources, and the profile URL to cite.
• get_state: one state or territory by two-letter code: the tax and law profile, a one-line lede, prose sections and the page URL.
• rank_counties: rank all 3,143 counties or one state’s by any field or by population, with conditions on other fields and a population floor. Up to 100 rows. This is the one thing the REST API cannot do in a single call.
• rank_states: rank the 50 states (DC and the territories on request) by one state-level fact: tax rates, gun grade, 2024 margin, home price, K-12 rank and the rest of the state facts the county map fans out.

Every result carries url, dataAsOf and sources. The server’s instructions ask the assistant to cite them. Limit: 60 requests a minute per address. The endpoint answers a browser GET with a short JSON notice and a 405, by design.