Two Mechanisms: The Role of Social Capital and Industrial Pollution Exposure in Explaining Racial Disparities in Self-Rated Health.

Kerry Ard,Cynthia Colen,Thelma Velez,Marisol Becerra

doi:10.3390/ijerph13101025

Kerry Ard, Cynthia Colen + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph13101025

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Abstract

This study provides an empirical test of two mechanisms (social capital and exposure to air pollution) that are theorized to mediate the effect of neighborhood on health and contribute to racial disparities in health outcomes. To this end, we utilize the Social Capital Benchmark Study, a national survey of individuals nested within communities in the United States, to estimate how multiple dimensions of social capital and exposure to air pollution, explain racial disparities in self-rated health. Our main findings show that when controlling for individual-confounders, and nesting within communities, our indicator of cognitive bridging, generalized trust, decreases the gap in self-rated health between African Americans and Whites by 84%, and the gap between Hispanics and Whites by 54%. Our other indicator of cognitive social capital, cognitive linking as represented by engagement in politics, decreases the gap in health between Hispanics and Whites by 32%, but has little impact on African Americans. We also assessed whether the gap in health was explained by respondents’ estimated exposure to toxicity-weighted air pollutants from large industrial facilities over the previous year. Our results show that accounting for exposure to these toxins has no effect on the racial gap in self-rated health in these data. This paper contributes to the neighborhood effects literature by examining the impact that estimated annual industrial air pollution, and multiple measures of social capital, have on explaining the racial gap in health in a sample of individuals nested within communities across the United States.

Highlights

IntroductionThere is a robust literature evidencing health disparities in the United States between non-HispanicWhites ( referred to as Whites) and racial and ethnic minorities [1,2,3]
There is a robust literature evidencing health disparities in the United States between non-HispanicWhites and racial and ethnic minorities [1,2,3]
When all three potential explanatory variables are simultaneously entered into regression analyses (Model 5), we find that the Black/White gap in self-rated health is reduced by such an order of magnitude that it ceases to be statistically significant (p < 0.05). This is largely driven by lower than average levels of social trust among African Americans. These findings suggest that certain forms of social capital, those that are related to the trust an individual feels for neighbors of a different social standing and their perception of political empowerment, are critical characteristics of the social environment that drives racial/ethnic disparities in health, among African Americans

Summary

Introduction

There is a robust literature evidencing health disparities in the United States between non-HispanicWhites ( referred to as Whites) and racial and ethnic minorities [1,2,3]. Hispanics, on average, experience lower overall mortality rates compared to Whites [8] they have been shown to have a higher prevalence of chronic diseases and risk-factors such as: diabetes [9], liver disease [10], HIV/AIDS [10], obesity [11] and poor self-rated health [12]. Even when controlling for individual-level explanatory variables, such as age, sex, health behaviors, and access to care, racial gaps in health remain [14,15,16]. These findings have prompted researchers to consider the

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