Gender and Health: The Effects of Constrained Choices and Social Policies by Bird Chloe E. & Patricia P. Rieker

Author:Bird, Chloe E. & Patricia P. Rieker [Bird, Chloe E.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2008-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

Neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and segregation

Clearly, the socioeconomic aspects of place of residence, such as the prevalence of wealthy or impoverished residents and of college graduates or high-school dropouts, can represent resources or barriers to creating a healthy life with effects above and beyond an individual’s income, education, or other assets. Neighborhood socioeconomic factors (as well as the resources of the larger community) may also amplify the health benefits of individual social and economic resources and the health risks of individual poverty. For example, advantaged neighborhoods may have better libraries and more collective social and economic resources, such as strong social networks, trust, and political representation and efficacy – resources that are collectively referred to as social capital. In contrast, disadvantaged neighborhoods have higher turnover, less social cohesion, and more disorder, including litter and dilapidated or abandoned buildings.

Some hypothesize that the neighborhood environment may be more important for women than for men because women traditionally spend more time in the home and are thus exposed to the neighborhood for a greater amount of time (Robert, 1999). Yet, other studies have found stronger associations between composite measures of neighborhood disadvantage and mortality among men than among women (MacIntyre, 2001; Raleigh & Kiri, 1997). LeClere and colleagues (LeClere, Rogers, & Peters, 1997) found that community median income is associated with all-cause mortality for men but not for women. A subsequent study found that census-tract-level variables – percent black, median family income, percent receiving public assistance, percent in deep poverty, and percent unemployed – are linked to the risk of CHD death for women, although all of these characteristics appear to be proxies for the percent of female-headed households in the community (LeClere, Rogers, & Peters, 1998). For example, in a British study, Stafford and colleagues (2005) found that neighborhood-level trust, integration into the wider society, left-wing political climate, physical quality of the residential environment, and unemployment rate were all linked more strongly to women’s self-reported health than to men’s. In contrast for men, between-neighborhood differences in health were fully explained by socioeconomic position and family type.[11] These studies suggest that neighborhood characteristics may have a stronger association to women’s health than to men’s (with the possible exception of young black men, particularly in the United States).

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