Dear Colleagues
Attached information on two papers that may be of interest to some of you in the latest issue of Social Science and Medicine
1. Social capital and neighborhood mortality rates in Chicago - K.A. Lochner, I. Kawachi, R.T. Brennan, S.L. Buka
2.Economy, community and mortality in British Columbia, Canada - G Veenstra
Best wishes
David McDaid
LSE Health and Social Care
Social Science and Medicine Vol 56(8) 2003 April
For more information about this journal visit: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/socscimed
Social capital and neighborhood mortality rates in Chicago
K.A. Lochner, I. Kawachi, R.T. Brennan, S.L. Buka
pp 1797-1805
Full text via ScienceDirect :
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=GatewayURL&_origin=CONTENTS&_method=citationSearch&_piikey=S0277953602001776&_version=1&md5=f44242e11593c0870d1d251d2bbfd150
Several empirical studies have suggested that neighborhood characteristics influence health, with most studies having focused on neighborhood deprivation or aspects of the physical environment, such as services and amenities. However, such physical characteristics are not the only features of neighborhoods that potentially affect health. Neighborhoods also matter because of the nature of their social organization. This study examined social capital as a potential neighborhood characteristic influencing health. Using a cross-sectional study design which linked counts of death for persons 45-64 years by race and sex to neighborhood indicators of social capital and poverty for 342 Chicago neighborhoods in the USA, we tested the ecological association between neighborhood-level social capital and mortality rates, taking advantage of the community survey data collected as part of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. We estimated a hierarchical generalized linear model to examine the association of race and sex specific mortality rates to social capital. Overall, neighborhood social capital--as measured by reciprocity, trust, and civic participation--was associated with lower neighborhood death rates, after adjustment for neighborhood material deprivation. Specifically, higher levels of neighborhood social capital were associated with lower neighborhood death rates for total mortality as well as death from heart disease and "other" causes for White men and women and, to a less consistent extent, for Blacks. However, there was no association between social capital and cancer mortality. Although, the findings from this study extend the state-level findings linking social capital to health to the level of neighborhoods, much work remains to be carried out before social capital can be widely applied to improve population health, including establishing standards of measurement, and exploring the potential "downsides" of social capital.
Author Keywords: Social capital; Neighborhood effects; United States; Multilevel models
Economy, community and mortality in British Columbia, Canada
G. Veenstra
pp 1807-1816
Full text via ScienceDirect :
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=GatewayURL&_origin=CONTENTS&_method=citationSearch&_piikey=S0277953602001788&_version=1&md5=5667ea4b54338d30d188a54539e323a5
Stimulated by the growing body of literature relating economic inequalities to inequalities in health, this article explores relationships between various economic attributes of communities and mortality rates among 24 coastal communities in British Columbia, Canada. Average household income, a measure of community wealth, was negatively related and the incidence of low incomes, a measure of poverty, was positively related to age-standardized mortality. Both were more strongly related to female than male mortality. Mean and median household income, the incidence of low incomes and a lack of disposable income, and the proportion of total income dollars derived from government sources were significantly related to mortality rates for younger and middle-aged men but not for elderly men. Mortality rates for younger and middle-aged women were not explicated by these economic attributes of communities: among elderly women only, mortality rates were higher in communities with a lower average household income and in those with a higher incidence of low incomes. Finally, a higher concentration in white-collar industries was related to higher mortality rates for females, even after controlling for other economic attributes of communities. These results do not obviously support a psychosocial argument for an individual-level relationship between income and health that assumes residents perceive their status primarily in relation to other members of the same community, but do provide moderate support for the materialist argument and moderate support for the psychosocial argument that assumes community residents perceive their status in relation to an encompassing reference group. Other viable interpretations of these relationships pertain to ecological characteristics of communities that are related to both economic well-being and population health status; in this instance, concentration in specific economic industries may help to understand the ecological relationships presented here.
Author Keywords: Economic prosperity; Economic industry; Community wealth; Poverty; Population health; Mortality rates; Canada
|