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Do Neighborhood Economic Characteristics, Racial Composition, and Residential Stability Predict Perceptions of Stress Associated with the Physical and Social Environment? Findings from a Multilevel Analysis in Detroit

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Abstract

As the body of evidence linking disparities in the health of urban residents to disparate social, economic and environmental contexts grows, efforts to delineate the pathways through which broader social and economic inequalities influence health have burgeoned. One hypothesized pathway connects economic and racial and ethnic inequalities to differentials in stress associated with social and physical environments, with subsequent implications for health. Drawing on data from Detroit, Michigan, we examined contributions of neighborhood-level characteristics (e.g., poverty rate, racial and ethnic composition, residential stability) and individual-level characteristics (e.g., age, gender) to perceived social and physical environmental stress. We found that neighborhood percent African American was positively associated with perceptions of both social and physical environmental stress; neighborhood percent poverty and percent Latino were positively associated with perceived physical environmental stress; and neighborhood residential stability was negatively associated with perceived social environmental stress. At the individual level, whites perceived higher levels of both social and physical environmental stress compared to African American residents of the same block groups, after accounting for other variables included in the models. Our findings suggest the importance of understanding and addressing contributions of neighborhood structural characteristics to perceptions of neighborhood stress. The consistency of the finding that neighborhood racial composition and individual-level race influence perceptions of both social and physical environments suggests the continuing importance of understanding the role played by structural conditions and by personal and collective histories that vary systematically by race and ethnicity within the United States.

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Acknowledgements

The Healthy Environments Partnership (www.hepdetroit.org) is affiliated with the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center (www.sph.umich.edu/urc). We thank the members of the HEP Steering Committee for their contributions to the work presented here, including representatives from Brightmoor Community Center, Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion, Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation, Friends of Parkside, Henry Ford Health System, and the University of Michigan School of Public Health and Survey Research Center. HEP is funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Science (NIEHS), no. R01 ES10936 and no. R01 ES014234. The results presented here are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of NIEHS. Finally, we thank Sue Andersen for her assistance with the preparation of this manuscript.

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Schulz, A.J., Zenk, S.N., Israel, B.A. et al. Do Neighborhood Economic Characteristics, Racial Composition, and Residential Stability Predict Perceptions of Stress Associated with the Physical and Social Environment? Findings from a Multilevel Analysis in Detroit. J Urban Health 85, 642–661 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-008-9288-5

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