Elsevier

Social Science & Medicine

Volume 61, Issue 6, September 2005, Pages 1135-1150
Social Science & Medicine

Neighborhood economic conditions, social processes, and self-rated health in low-income neighborhoods in Texas: A multilevel latent variables model

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2005.02.010Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper develops and tests a comprehensive model to explain the relationships of neighborhood economic indicators to multiple dimensions of neighborhood social and physical organization as well as the pathways through which neighborhood social and physical characteristics influence individual health outcomes. We hypothesized that neighborhood poverty would be associated with lower collective efficacy, lower social capital, higher degrees of social and physical disorder, worse social processes pertaining to children such as trust, and higher degrees of fear of crime and racism. Neighborhood social and physical characteristics were hypothesized to mediate the effect of neighborhood poverty on self-rated health, both directly and indirectly through their influence on neighborhood differences in social support and health behaviors, which in turn affect individual health. The results, based on data from low-income neighborhoods in Texas, USA generally supported the model and indicated that the effect of neighborhood impoverishment on health is mediated by social and physical neighborhood characteristics.

Section snippets

Background

Neighborhood socioeconomic conditions are known to affect health after controlling for individual demographics and socioeconomic status (SES). Although it has been proposed that neighborhood social processes and physical conditions mediate the effect of neighborhood impoverishment on health, there is only scant empirical evidence on these associations. It is also not clear what are the pathways through which neighborhood social processes and physical conditions affect individual health.

This

Neighborhood context and health

Recent years have seen an explosion in the study of neighborhood environments and their influence on population health. Neighborhood contextual effects have been found after controlling for individual factors such as age, race/ethnicity, income, education, social class, or baseline health status. All the studies reviewed in this section documenting contextual effects on individual health control for some individual characteristics. The several dimensions of neighborhood environments which have

Participants

Data for this study were drawn from surveys obtained as part of a project exploring social context and health in Texas neighborhoods funded by the Texas Department of Health. The study was conducted in 13 low/medium income communities in Texas between June 2001 and August 2002. Eleven communities were in the Houston area and two in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. The communities in Houston were selected to represent both older, established residential neighborhoods as well as more recently

Demographics and neighborhood level variation

Twenty-eight percent of the sample was Black, and 59% was Hispanic. Three out of four respondents were female, and a little less than half the sample was living below the federal poverty level. Approximately half the sample had participated in physical activity during the last month and had at least three close friends and relatives. More than 60% of the sample had lived in their neighborhood for 5 or more years. Neighborhoods were mainly poor, with half of them having poverty rates over 27%

Discussion

The results of this study indicate that individual self-rated health is affected by a complex interplay of neighborhood characteristics, even after controlling for differences in individual factors. The data are consistent with the hypothesized model where the effect of neighborhood poverty on individual health is mediated by social and physical processes. Consistently with the literature, social capital, measured by trust and norms of reciprocity was associated negatively with impoverishment

Acknowledgement

This study was part of a project funded by a Texas Department of Health Innovation Grant (2000–2003) and was approved by Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (HSC-SPH-00-064). We are indebted to Norma Perez and Melissa Montoya for coordinating the data collection, to Arlene Keddie for help in literature searches, and to Ben Amick, John Ribble, and Jan Risser who contributed to the project.

References (82)

  • K. Lochner et al.

    Social capital: A guide to its measurement

    Health & Place

    (1999)
  • K.A. Lochner et al.

    Social capital and neighborhood mortality rates in Chicago

    Social Science & Medicine

    (2003)
  • A. McCulloch

    An examination of social capital and social disorganisation in neighbourhoods in the British household panel study

    Social Science & Medicine

    (2003)
  • C.E. Ross

    Walking, exercising, and smoking: Does neighborhood matter?

    Social Science & Medicine

    (2000)
  • J.F. Sallis et al.

    Environmental and policy interventions to promote physical activity

    American Journal of Preventive Medicine

    (1998)
  • M. Stead et al.

    “It's as if you’re locked in”: Qualitative explanations for area effects on smoking in disadvantaged communities

    Health & Place

    (2001)
  • S.V. Subramanian et al.

    Neighborhood differences in social capital: A compositional artifact or a contextual construct?

    Health & Place

    (2003)
  • G. Veenstra

    Social capital, SES and health: An individual-level analysis

    Social Science & Medicine

    (2000)
  • M. Wen et al.

    Poverty, affluence, and income inequality: Neighborhood economic structure and its implications for health

    Social Science & Medicine

    (2003)
  • C.S. Aneshensel et al.

    The neighborhood context of adolescent mental health

    Journal of Health & Social Behavior

    (1996)
  • J.L. Balfour et al.

    Neighborhood environment and loss of physical function in older adults: Evidence from the Alameda County Study (comment)

    American Journal of Epidemiology

    (2002)
  • J. Bannister et al.

    Introduction: Fear and the city

    Urban Studies

    (2001)
  • J.R. Barnett

    Does place of residence matter? Contextual effects and smoking in Christchurch (see comment)

    New Zealand Medical Journal

    (2000)
  • D. Belle

    Gender differences in the social moderators of stress

  • L. Berkman et al.

    Social epidemiology

    (2000)
  • L.F. Berkman et al.

    Social networks, host resistance, and mortality: A nine-year follow-up study of Alameda county residents

    American Journal of Epidemiology

    (1979)
  • J.B. Bjorner et al.

    Multi-item scales for measuring global self-rated health

    Research on Aging

    (1999)
  • P. Bourdieux

    The forms of social capital

  • J. Brehm et al.

    Individual level evidence for the causes and consequences of social capital

    American Journal of Political Science

    (1997)
  • A.E. Brodsky et al.

    PSOC in community context: Multi-level correlates of a measure of psychological sense of community in low-income, urban neighborhoods

    Journal of Community Psychology

    (1999)
  • A. Bryk et al.

    Hierarchical linear models

    (1992)
  • C. Campbell

    Social capital and health

    (1999)
  • M.O. Caughy et al.

    Experiences of racism among African American parents and the mental health of their preschool-aged children

    American Journal of Public Health

    (2004)
  • R. Clark et al.

    Racism as a stressor for African Americans. A biopsychosocial model (comment)

    American Psychologist

    (1999)
  • D. Cohen et al.

    “Broken windows” and the risk of gonorrhea (comment)

    American Journal of Public Health

    (2000)
  • D.A. Cohen et al.

    Neighborhood physical conditions and health

    American Journal of Public Health

    (2003)
  • J. Coleman

    The foundations of social theory

    (1990)
  • J.S. Coleman

    Social capital in the creation of human capital

    American Journal of Sociology

    (1988)
  • C.J. Coulton et al.

    Measuring neighborhood context for young children in an urban area

    American Journal of Community Psychology

    (1996)
  • S. Curtis et al.

    Is there a place for geography in the analysis of health inequality?

    Sociology of Health and Illness

    (1998)
  • J. DeFilippis

    The myth of social capital in community development

    Housing Policy Debate

    (2001)
  • Cited by (190)

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text