Abstract
Two conceptual and methodological foundations of segregation studies are that (i) segregation involves more than one group, and (ii) segregation measures need to quantify how different population groups are distributed across space. Therefore, percentage of population belonging to a group is not an appropriate measure of segregation because it does not describe how populations are spread across different areal units or neighborhoods. In principle, evenness and isolation are the two distinct dimensions of segregation that capture the spatial patterns of population groups. To portray people’s daily environment more accurately, segregation measures need to account for the spatial relationships between areal units and to reflect the situations at the neighborhood scale. For these reasons, the use of local spatial entropy-based diversity index (SHi) and local spatial isolation index (Si) to capture the evenness and isolation dimensions of segregation, respectively, are preferable. However, these two local spatial segregation indexes have rarely been incorporated into health research. Rather ineffective and insufficient segregation measures have been used in previous studies. Hence, this paper empirically demonstrates how the two measures can reflect the two distinct dimensions of segregation at the neighborhood level, and argues conceptually and set the stage for their future use to effectively and meaningfully examine the relationships between residential segregation and health.
Highlights
In the United States (US), residential segregation has long been considered to shape health as blacks and/or poor individuals are not distributed across geographic locations in the same manners as other groups [1,2,3]
Despite the conceptual importance of the local approach and the use of local spatial segregation indexes, they have rarely been incorporated into health research
As the condition involves more than one group, measuring the levels of segregation needs to account for the spatial interaction of different population groups
Summary
In the United States (US), residential segregation has long been considered to shape health (i.e., health behaviors and health outcomes) as blacks and/or poor individuals are not distributed across geographic locations in the same manners as other groups [1,2,3]. Previous studies [4] have adopted either a global or local approach in measuring segregation The former approach is based on the use of global measures that summarize the condition of a county or metropolitan area as a whole; these measures are used for inter-city, inter-regional, or inter-metropolitan comparisons. The latter approach is based on the use of local measures derived from data for US census tracts or block groups (sometimes zip-code areas); these measures are used for neighborhood comparisons. While these two approaches have different purposes, they have different degrees of relevance to health research. Using them as local units (i.e., for the local approach) to examine the relationships between residential segregation and health is appropriate as they can portray people’s daily environment more accurately than using other areal unit entities
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