Seminar: Is the Effect of Poverty and Racial Concentration on Health and Mortality Robust over Time?

ABSTRACT: Research on the effect of neighborhood residential poverty on individual morbidity and mortality usually suffers from a chronological mismatch between the measurement of health and the characteristics of the place of residence. Census based measures, which are the most common method for characterizing the place of residence, are very rarely coincident with outcome measures from surveys. Estimated neighborhood effects, thus, can be interpreted as either the contemporaneous effects of place or the temporally lagged effects of past residence on current health. Both types can be justified in conceptual terms but are rarely distinguished from one another. In this study, we will disentangle the lagged from contemporaneous effects of residential poverty concentration on adult self-rated health and mortality in the United States. Data from the American Changing Lives Survey (ACL), Waves 1-4 will be used. Initial interviews in this multistage area probability sample were conducted with a sample of 3617 adults over 25 beginning in 1986. Additional waves of data collection occurred in 1989, 1994, and 2001. Follow up with the National Death Index is used to ascertain vital status at each wave. Respondents’ places of residence have been geocoded to Census geography (including census tract) for the three decennial censuses that span the period (1980, 1990, 2000). For those respondents who remain in the same neighborhood for at least two of the follow up periods, we will examine whether the effect of poverty concentration on mortality and self-rated health in the census period closest to the survey year differs from those estimated using information from the census furthest in time from the survey year.

MPC Seminars are held in 50 Willey Hall on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota Minneapolis Campus.