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