Poor Neighborhoods Research Articles

0160 Sleep and high body mass index in adolescents: Ethnicity and socioeconomic status as moderators

Abstract Introduction Sleep deficiency and obesity disproportionately affect racial/ethnic minorities and those with lower socioeconomic status (SES). Considerable research has linked sleep deficiency to overweight/obesity. Less clear is the interactive effects of sleep duration (SD) and social determinants (i.e., SES, race/ethnicity) on weight status in adolescents. This study examined the role of race/ethnicity and SES as moderators of associations between SD and overweight/obesity in a nationally representative adolescent sample. Methods Using the National Survey of Children’s Health 2017-2018 dataset, we included adolescents (10-17 y.o.) with available SD and Body Mass Index (BMI) data (n=24,337). Parents reported children’s SD and sleep regularity. Adolescents with a BMI ≥85th percentile were classified as overweight/obese. We used a stepwise approach to identify SES factors and covariates to include in the model. Accounting for complex survey design, as well as sleep regularity and selected covariates (i.e., age, sex, smoking, exercise, and depression, diabetes), logistic regression (STATA 16.0) estimated the interaction between SD and selected social determinants (i.e., race/ethnicity, family income, primary caregiver education, neighborhood condition) in adolescents. Results Every hour increase in SD was associated with a 7% decrease in the odds of high BMI (OR=0.93, p=0.03) regardless of race/ethnicity and SES. There were significant interactions between SD and social determinants. Compared with the White (OR=0.88, p<0.001), the association between longer sleep and lower odds of high BMI was weakened and even reversed in Hispanic adolescents (OR=1.20, p=0.02). Similarly, family income below 100% FPL (versus 300% or above) (OR=1.19, p=0.02) and primary caregiver having education below high school (versus high school or above) (OR=1.15, p=0.03) also attenuated the associations. Poor neighborhood condition was not a moderator but independently associated with high BMI (OR=1.57, p=0.02). Conclusion Adolescence may be a sensitive period that sets the stage for the interaction between sleep and social risk factors on overweight/obesity. Increasing sleep duration is associated with decreased risk of overweight/obesity, but the protective role is dampened in Hispanic adolescents and those with the low SES. Our findings suggest that sleep-related prevention and intervention efforts should target at-risk populations who experience health disparities. Support (If Any)

Wealth, health, and beyond: Is COVID-19 less likely to spread in rich neighborhoods?

Since December 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has quickly spread across the world. The traditional understanding of the relationship between wealth and the spread of contagious diseases is that similar to many precedent epidemics, the pandemic spread easily in poor neighborhoods in many countries. The environmental and socioeconomic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic are still poorly understood, thus this paper examines the relationship between neighborhood characteristics and the spread of the pandemic through a case study of Shenzhen, a Chinese megacity with many low-income rural migrants. The major finding is that wealthier and larger neighborhoods in Shenzhen were more likely to be infected in the first wave of the pandemic in 2020. This spread pattern is likely to result from China’s strict control to prevent the pandemic, human mobility, and demographic characteristics such as income. This finding reveals a new phenomenon that contrasts with the traditional understanding of the influence of wealth on the spread of epidemics. This paper enriches the understanding of the role of neighborhoods in the spread of the pandemic, and it has important public policy implications.

Using mobile money data and call detail records to explore the risks of urban migration in Tanzania

Understanding what factors predict whether an urban migrant will end up in a deprived neighbourhood or not could help prevent the exploitation of vulnerable individuals. This study leveraged pseudonymized mobile money interactions combined with cell phone data to shed light on urban migration patterns and deprivation in Tanzania. Call detail records were used to identify individuals who migrated to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city. A street survey of the city’s subwards was used to determine which individuals moved to more deprived areas. t-tests showed that people who settled in poorer neighbourhoods had less money coming into their mobile money account after they moved, but not before. A machine learning approach was then utilized to predict which migrants will move to poorer areas of the city, making them arguably more vulnerable to poverty, unemployment and exploitation. Features indicating the strength and location of people’s social connections in Dar es Salaam before they moved (‘pull factors’) were found to be most predictive, more so than traditional ‘push factors’ such as proxies for poverty in the migrant’s source region.

Examining Spatial Opportunity for Local Action: From Theory to Practice

Opportunity assessments have served as crucial tools for advocacy and policy-based action to address variability in spatially distributed urban opportunity. However, despite the vast body of theoretical and normative frameworks for discerning the effects of space, the current practices of opportunity mapping do not provide grounded assessments of differences that disproportionately affect the poor and racial minorities. We analyze seventeen opportunity assessments from the last twenty years and find issues of construct validity, implicit racial bias, and limited interpretability of outputs. More importantly, symptomatic outcomes of historical marginalization are conflated with problems of material access in poor and minority neighborhoods.

Helminth Infections in Children.

Helminth Infections in Children.

Food and Revolution: Fighting Hunger in Nicaragua, 1960–1993

Food and Revolution: Fighting Hunger in Nicaragua, 1960–1993

‘As soon as they can hold a glass, they begin taking alcohol’: a qualitative study on early childhood substance use in Mbale District, Uganda

BackgroundGlobally, substance use is a leading contributor to the burden of disease among young people, with far reaching social, economic and health effects. Following a finding of harmful alcohol use among 5-8-year-old children in Mbale District, Uganda, this study aims to investigate community members’ views on early childhood substance use among children below the age of 10 years.MethodsIn 2016, we conducted eight focus group discussions with 48 parents and 26 key informant interviews with teachers, health workers, alcohol distributors, traditional healers, religious leaders, community leaders and youth workers. We used thematic content analysis. Four participants and two research assistants reviewed and confirmed the findings.ResultsAlcohol in everyday life: ‘Even children on laps taste alcohol’: Almost all participants confirmed the existence of and concern for substance use before age 10. They described a context where substance use was widespread in the community, especially intake of local alcoholic brews. Children would access substances in the home or buy it themselves. Those living in poor neighbourhoods or slums and children of brewers were described as particularly exposed.Using substances to cope: ‘We don’t want them to drink’: Participants explained that some used substances to cope with a lack of food and resources for childcare, as well as traumatic experiences. This made children in deprived families and street-connected children especially vulnerable to substance use. Participants believed this was a result of seeing no alternative solution.ConclusionsTo our knowledge, this is the first study to describe the context and conditions of childhood substance use before age 10 in Mbale District, Uganda. The study shows that community members attributed early childhood substance use to a social context of widespread use in the community, which was exacerbated by conditions of material and emotional deprivation. These social determinants for this practice deserve public health attention and intervention.

The Spatiality of COVID-19 in Kermanshah Metropolis, Iran

The COVID-19 pandemic is a severe ongoing health crisisworldwide. Studying the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 can help policymakers develop successful pandemic management plans. This paper focuses on the spatial epidemiology of COVID-19 among different social classes in the Kermanshah metropolis, Iran. This cross-sectional study uses the data of people infected with COVID-19 in the Kermanshah metropolis in 2020, acquired from the official COVID-19 Registry of Kermanshah. The results show that 2013 people were infected with COVID-19 (male = 1164 and female = 849). The mean age of the patients was 45 ± 18.69. The Moran’s I show that COVID-19 in different social classes was clustered across the neighbourhoods in the Kermanshah metropolis. The mean ages of men and women were 44.51 ± 18.62 and 45.69 ± 18.76, respectively. Importantly, COVID-19 was highly prevalent in the middle-class groups. Age group comparisons indicate that older people were the most infected in poorer neighbourhoods. In the middle-classtheage group of 0–14 years and in the rich neighbourhoods the age group of 15–64 years were the most exposed to the disease. The findings of this study suggest that older people and lower socioeconomic classes should be prioritised while developing and implementing preventative programs for COVID-19 and similar pandemics.

Environmental inequality in the neighborhood networks of urban mobility in US cities

Research has made clear that neighborhoods impact the health and well-being of their residents. A related strand of research shows that neighborhood disadvantage is geographically clustered. Because the neighborhoods of low-income and minority populations tend to be more disadvantaged, neighborhood conditions help explain racial and socioeconomic inequalities. These strands of research restrict processes of neighborhood influence to operate only within and between geographically contiguous neighbors. However, we are underestimating the role of neighborhood conditions in explaining inequality if disadvantage extends beyond the residential and extralocal environments into a network of neighborhoods spanning the urban landscape based on where residents move within a city. I use anonymized mobile phone data to measure exposure to air pollution among residents of poor and minority neighborhoods in 88 of the most populous US cities. I find that residents from minority and poor neighborhoods travel to neighborhoods that have greater air pollution levels than the neighborhoods that residents from White and nonpoor neighborhoods visit. Hispanic neighborhoods exhibit the greatest overall pollution burden, Black/White and Asian/White disparities are greatest at the network than residential scale, and the socioeconomic advantage of lower risk exposure is highest for residents from White neighborhoods. These inequalities are notable given recent declines in segregation and air pollution levels in American cities.

Perceived Safety and Security Barriers to Walking and Bicycling: Insights from Milwaukee

Two broad categories of barriers to improving pedestrian and bicycle transportation are concerns about traffic safety and personal security. Gathering residents’ perceptions of these barriers can help public agencies develop effective and equitable strategies to create more sustainable transportation systems. We analyzed open-ended responses to the 2020 Milwaukee Safe and Healthy Streets survey to identify common traffic safety barriers (e.g., driver behavior such as speeding and red-light-running) and personal security barriers (e.g., undesirable street behaviors such as gun violence, robbery, and assault) to walking and bicycling. Then, we developed binary logistic models to identify perceptions of neighborhood characteristics, and individual demographic characteristics related to perceiving walking or bicycling as unsafe with respect to traffic or personal security. For walking, respondents’ traffic safety concerns were most strongly associated with perceptions of fast neighborhood traffic speeds, and personal security concerns were associated with perceptions of poor neighborhood cleanliness. For bicycling, both traffic safety concerns and personal security concerns were most strongly associated with poor neighborhood opportunities for exercise. At an individual level, living in a zero-vehicle household and having self-reported poor health were associated with rating traffic safety for both walking and bicycling as unsafe; having disabilities was associated with rating walking as unsafe. In almost every aspect of our analysis, respondents living in lower-income communities reported greater barriers to pedestrian and bicycle safety and security than residents from wealthier neighborhoods. The results emphasized the importance of both the social and physical environment for improving pedestrian and bicycle transportation.

Residential stability of the urban poor in Bangladesh: The roles of social capital

The literature on low-cost housing has paid considerable attention to the economic factors influencing the residential stability of the urban poor. However, tenants' perceptions of residential stability in poor neighbourhoods still represent major gaps within the existing knowledge. This paper investigates migration, length of residency and perceived risk of eviction among urban poor, with the aim of understanding residential stability within the context of Least Developed Countries (LDCs). We frame this study within the literature on ‘social capital’, and analyse the aspects of residential stability while focusing on tenants' perceptions of eviction risk as the key outcome of interest. We used data from 1800 households, obtained from 18 poor neighbourhoods across three cities in Bangladesh. The findings suggest that social capital has a potential role to play in increasing residential stability among the urban poor. These are critical in the upgrading and redevelopment of housing, and in promoting the residential stability of the urban poor in Bangladesh and other LDCs. The potential engagement of social capital in housing the poor could make a valuable contribution to the literature on international housing policy. We discuss the implications at length, and draw links with international housing policy discourse.

The Contamination of the Earth. A History of Pollutions in the Industrial Age by François Jarrige and Thomas le Roux

Reviewed by: The Contamination of the Earth. A History of Pollutions in the Industrial Age by François Jarrige and Thomas le Roux Harry Lintsen (bio) The Contamination of the Earth. A History of Pollutions in the Industrial Age by François Jarrige and Thomas le Roux translated by Janice Egan and Michael Egan. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020. Pp. xi + 459. Never has reading a historical study made me feel so sad. This book depicts the extensive pollution of the earth during the industrial revolution, showing that it was the result of conscious policy by entrepreneurs, politicians, and administrators. They knowingly continued or made polluting activities legal. Legislation to protect the environment, nature, and human health failed, as did opponents' attempts to turn the tide. The pessimistic perspective at the end of this book only confirms the bleakness. The study is structured around three eras: An Ancien Régime of Pollution 1700–1830, Naturalizing Pollutions in the Age of Progress 1830–1914, and The Toxic Age 1914–1973. For each period, the authors detail the nature of the pollution and the shifts. In addition, each period has a specific emphasis: for the first period, this is the role of chemistry, for the second, the role of experts, and for the third, the role of wars, energy, and mass consumption. Each period ends with an analysis of the policy and regulations regarding environment, nature, and health. Starting point for the analyses are the activities of craftsmen and entrepreneurs, and developments in industrial sectors. The book describes many industries, from metallurgical plants, foundries, breweries, refineries, mining, and chemicals, to textile and gunpowder factories. The reader can thus follow the sources of environmental pollution and the associated health risks in history, as well as identify the responsibilities. The authors take us to all the continents, focusing—as expected—on countries like Britain, France, Germany, and the United States. This approach runs the risk of repeating information. The study uses many recently published monographs on environmental history. These are often aimed at specific industries or regions, whereas this book attempts to provide a global synthesis by connecting sub-studies with social and economic history, the history of law and the state, and the history of science and technology. The result is impressive: a high level of information, extensive analyses with a wide scope, original propositions, [End Page 544] and a new, historical picture of global pollution. The book will become a standard work in environmental history. The authors' thesis is that pollution has become a decisive element in the functioning of the capitalist world. The history of pollution since the 1700s has been one of successive changes in scale "from dispersed and small-scale industry, situated on a single site, to the large industrial complexes and massive proliferation of pollution sources that typify the contemporary pollutions regime" (p. 9). At the same time, there has been a "liberalization" of environmental regulation and "naturalization" of industrial nuisances. Strict preindustrial revolution regulation was abandoned. Entrepreneurs, politicians, and administrators saw pollution as an inevitable and acceptable phenomenon despite the many protests. Nuisance was part of progress. The scaling-up of environmental problems means: toxic substances can be found in every corner of the earth, and pollution is still most intense near the sources of emissions. A constant in this history is the plight of the poor. Poor neighborhoods, working-class towns, and countries in the global south have been (and are) most affected by pollution. The dynamics in power relations and inequality, in domination and exclusion, also appear to apply to the history of pollution. This elaborate work certainly deserves all the praise. The question is whether environmental history is ready for a new step in light of current environmental debates. Is a historical synthesis focusing exclusively on environmental problems still sufficient? In any case, the period after 1970 requires a more extensive analysis. According to some historians, the first deep transition phase—industrialization and modernization—has ended, and a new phase began after 1970, the second deep transition. This will occupy at least the twenty-first century and have global sustainability and equality as social ambitions. Moreover, we will have to place the environmental issues...

The Comics of R. Crumb and R. Crumb: Literature, Autobiography, and the Quest for Self

The Comics of R. Crumb and R. Crumb: Literature, Autobiography, and the Quest for Self

‘Not like me’: educational aspirations and mothering in an urban poor neighbourhood in India

The paper argues that the mother’s association with the child’s schooling and educational needs is not just limited and peculiar to the middle-class families, as the literature suggests, but it is increasingly true of poor and working-class families too. This paper discusses how mothers from a poor neighbourhood in India straddle between household work, paid employment and children’s education and how they envisage and support their children’s schooling, at times going against the general tide to ensure a better life for their children. Other than highlighting the gendered nature of support for children’s education, this paper, also outlines the nature of the differences and distinctions among mothers from a poor neighbourhood in terms of the family social status and educational levels.

Exploring the potential for rainwater use for the urban poor in Bangladesh

Abstract Under the climate crisis and rapid urbanisation, rainwater harvesting (RWH) is more pertinent than ever. In Bangladesh, the full potential of rainwater use, especially for the urban poor, has not been explored. This study reviewed the recently-executed national plans to assess the RWH provisions, explored literature to map RWH practice, showed the alignment between the plans and the practices, and assessed the provision of RWH in the currently-implemented plans, with a particular focus on the urban poor. Although the past plans recognised RWH, the study found that these did not emphasise the implementation process nor offer provisions for the urban poor. RWH was, however, widely practised in the urban, peri-urban, and rural parts of the country by utilising different catchment structures. Building on the experiences of other countries, the study assessed the feasibility of RWH for the urban poor to meet their sanitation and hygiene needs under the changing climate. The study concluded that a detailed ‘Rainwater Harvesting and Management Plan’ supporting the adoption and promotion of community-led models to mitigate RWH-related challenges in the urban slums and integrating multi-storied buildings to harvest rainwater for the poor neighbourhoods could ensure efficient and equitable rainwater management for the urban poor.

Disamenity effects of displaced villagers’ resettlement community on housing price in China and implication for socio-spatial segregation

In the 2010s, the return of the state in land expropriation and urban (re)development processes has resulted in a new type of neighborhood in urban China, namely, displaced villagers’ resettlement community (DVRC). The government aimed to promote the social integration of land-lost peasants into urban society by placing DVRCs in areas with good accessibility and mixed land-use development. However, some studies found that the territorial stigmatization of DVRCs as poor and uncivilized neighborhoods has caused the depreciation of houses in DVRCs. Does this disamenity effect spill over to nearby houses? If yes, does this disamenity effect vary across space? This research uses Chengdu, the largest city in Western China, as the case study. A big data approach is used to analyze the list price of 53,969 houses and their housing attributes. An ordinary least squares hedonic model is used to determine the effect of the proximity to DVRC on house price at an overall statistical level. Then, a mixed geographically weighted regression model is used to examine the spatial heterogeneity of this disamenity effect. The empirical results support the account that DVRCs depreciate nearby houses. In these underdeveloped suburban areas, the proximity to DVRCs is positively associated with housing prices because of its function as a proxy for the prospective proximity to urban service facilities. These findings indicate that the government trial of social integration promotion is not that successful and help identify areas that require interventions the most to mitigate socio-spatial segregation.

Linking Socioeconomics to Biodiversity in the City: The Case of a Migrant Keystone Bird Species

Billions of wild animals migrate every year between breeding and non-breeding sites, facing new environmental conditions due to anthropogenic change. Although cities engender profound environmental changes, they provide habitat for some migratory birds contributing to conserving biodiversity and restoring human-nature connections. A common issue in Neotropical cities is their socio-environmental segregation, that might result in wealthier people having access to greater biodiversity in their neighborhoods. Although growing evidence shows a relationship between wealth and biodiversity in cities, it remains poorly investigated in relation to animals, particularly migratory birds. We present the first study on the effects of socioeconomic status on a Neotropical austral migrant considered a keystone species. We tested whether neighborhood socioeconomic category and habitat variables relate to the occurrence of the Green-backed Firecrown hummingbird in its overwintering habitat in urban areas. We hypothesized that higher socioeconomic status of neighborhoods would positively influence hummingbird occurrence through mediating effects of woody plant cover. We found that hummingbird occurrence increased with socioeconomic level of neighborhoods and woody cover. Specifically, we found that socioeconomic level influenced hummingbird occurrence indirectly through woody and shrub cover. We also found a direct effect of socioeconomic level on hummingbird occurrence suggesting the need for further research. Our findings show that wealthier neighborhoods exhibit greater woody cover and higher hummingbird occurrence than poorer neighborhoods, providing dissimilar opportunities to experience nature close to home. In neighborhoods where people of lower socioeconomic status live, strategies aiming to increase tree and shrub cover will promote a more environmentally just city.

Is COVID-19 Causing More Business Closures in Poor and Minority Neighborhoods?

We are starting to understand the magnitude of economic damage from the COVID-19 pandemic. Current estimates cover the national or state level, but tell us little about how massive business closures may be affecting urban vitality at the intrametropolitan level. A particular concern is whether urban areas with high poor or minority populations are more deeply affected. This paper combines InfoGroup Historic Business Data and Google Map API to analyze business closures at the neighborhood level in Franklin County, Ohio, encompassing the Columbus Metropolitan Area. As expected, retail and restaurant sectors had the highest number of closures, but closure rates were higher in other sectors. Descriptive and multivariate analyzes reveal that downtown Columbus has been severely affected, but no disadvantaging effect for communities of color or neighborhoods with concentrations of poor residents is found to be statistically significant.

Renting under racial capitalism: residential segregation and rent exploitation in the United States

This purpose of this study is to understand the nature of rent exploitation, or the cost burden that marginalized renters bear in an unequal housing market. I ask how rent exploitation is related to neighborhood characteristics and facilitated by residential segregation, and is further associated with housing problems including rent burden and eviction. Using the American Community Survey, I analyze rent exploitation and rent burden in neighborhoods by how they relate to neighborhood characteristics and residential segregation. I also use eviction records for a case study of Harris County, TX to analyze how rent exploitation impacts eviction rates. I find that neighborhoods with higher percentages of racially minoritized households and households below the poverty line experience higher levels of rent exploitation. Furthermore I find residential segregation is associated with more unequal levels of rent exploitation. Regression and GIS analysis together reveal that Black, Latinx, and poorer neighborhoods experience the highest levels of rent exploitation and eviction in Harris County. These findings reveal the conditions under which renters are more vulnerable to rent exploitation. Residential segregation is a mechanism of racial capitalism that makes inequality durable at the expense of Black and Latinx renters and renters below the poverty line.

Neighbourhood and the Perception of the Quality of Medical Treatment

Numerous studies have explored the role of the economic characteristics of a neighbourhood on the health status of its residents. We contribute to this work by examining the effects of the change in concentration of affluence on the perception of the quality of medical treatment received by the poor. We consider different neighbourhoods characterised by their level of prosperity. Based on the Asset Index, a particular primary sampling unit is identified as poor, middle or rich neighbourhoods to capture regional differences in the level of poverty. In each of these regions, we measure how the percentage of poor who claim that they were treated nicely varies with the change in the percentage of rich. The results reveal that, after a point, the probability of the perception of receiving superior treatment initially increases with an increase in the percentage of rich people and then starts declining. The principal component analysis is used to create weights in the asset index. The estimation is based on the nationally representative India Human Development Survey-2 (IHDS-2) household data collected in 2011–2012. We employ an ordered logit model for the analysis, as the perception of the quality of treatment, the dependent variable, is ordered in nature. Furthermore, we use Heckman’s two-step correction method to control for the plausibility of ‘self-selection’. JEL: I14, I39