Cumulative housing cost burden exposures and disadvantages to children's well-being and health.

Housing affordability is a growing challenge for households in the United States and other developed countries. Prolonged exposure to housing cost burden can have damaging effects on households, and, in particular, children. These burdens can exacerbate parental stress, reduce investments in children and expose households to greater neighborhood disadvantage. In this study, we use national survey data to assess whether cumulative housing cost burden exposure is associated with disadvantages to children's well-being and health. We observe that long-term exposures are linked to lower achievement in math and reading standardized test scores, as well as higher levels of behavior problems. Moreover, we identify that three mechanisms--caregiver distress, economic strain, and neighborhood disadvantage--operate as mediating pathways for these disadvantages to different degrees between these three outcomes. Overall, our study highlights how the dimension of time is increasingly important to our understanding of the challenges that families face related to housing affordability.

Association between neighborhood poverty and ovarian reserve: the ovarian aging study.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to examine the association between neighborhood poverty and ovarian reserve. METHODS: Among 1,019 healthy premenopausal women in the Ovarian Aging Study, aggregate exposure to neighborhood poverty was examined in relation to biomarkers of ovarian reserve, antimüllerian hormone (AMH) and antral follicle count (AFC). Specifically, the interaction of age-x-neighborhood poverty was assessed cross-sectionally to determine whether AMH and AFC declines across women may be greater in women exposed to more neighborhood poverty. Neighborhood poverty was assessed by geocoding and linking women's residential addresses in adulthood to US Census data. RESULTS: Independent of covariates, a significant interaction term showed the association between age and AMH varied by degree of exposure to neighborhood poverty in adulthood (b = -0.001, P < 0.05). AMH declines increased progressively across women exposed to low, medium, and high levels of neighborhood poverty. In addition, main effects showed that higher neighborhood poverty was related to higher AMH in the younger women only (b = 0.022, P < 0.01). Results related to AFC were all nonsignificant (P > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Across women, greater aggregate exposure to neighborhood poverty in adulthood was related to lower ovarian reserve, indexed by AMH. In addition, there was a positive association between neighborhood poverty and AMH in younger women that attenuated in the older women. Together, results suggest that neighborhood disadvantage may have detrimental impacts that manifest as initially higher AMH, resulting in greater ovarian follicle loss over time. However, it remains unclear whether these results examining differences across women may replicate when AMH declines by neighborhood poverty are examined longitudinally.

Gentrification Yields Racial And Ethnic Disparities In Exposure To Contextual Determinants Of Health.

This article examines racial and ethnic disparities in the relationship between gentrification and exposure to contextual determinants of health. In our study, we focused on changes in selected contextual determinants of health (health care access, social deprivation, air pollution, and walkability) and life expectancy during the period 2006-21 among residents of gentrifying census tracts in six large US cities that have experienced different gentrification patterns and have different levels of segregation: Chicago, Illinois; Los Angeles, California; New York, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; San Francisco, California; and Seattle, Washington. We found that gentrification was associated with overall improvements in the likelihood of living in Medically Underserved Areas across racial and ethnic groups, but it was also associated with increased social deprivation and reduced life expectancy among Black people, Hispanic people, and people of another or undetermined race or ethnicity. In contrast, we found that gentrification was related to better (or unchanged) contextual determinants of health for Asian people and White people. Our findings can inform policies that target communities identified to be particularly at risk for worsening contextual determinants of health as a result of gentrification.

Keeping kin close? Geographies of family networks by race and income, 1981-2017.

Objective: This study examined changes in geographic proximity to family members among race and income groups in the United States from 1981 to 2017. Background: Close geographic proximity to family members can facilitate mutual support and strengthen family bonds. Some scholars argue that institutional sources of support have replaced many core family functions, which might mean that households are likely to live increasingly farther away from family. Advancing technology and changing labor market opportunities might reinforce this pattern. Yet, the ongoing cultural and emotional salience of family might curtail the effects of these factors on the increasing distance to family. Method: We conducted a quantitative analysis of longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). We utilized the multigenerational structure of the PSID and restricted-use geocodes to map kin proximity at every interview from 1981 to 2017. We cross-classified our sample by race and income, focusing on Black and White respondents across income quartiles (n = 171,501 person-periods). Results: High-income White respondents showed the greatest increases in distance from kin over time, whereas proximity to kin among other race-income groups was relatively stable. Conclusion: Proximate kin has become less central in the lives of high-income White households over time, whereas close proximity to kin has been the norm over time for other racial and income groups. These results have implications for racial and income differences in kin relations over time.

Effects of Prolonged Exposure to Air Pollution and Neighborhood Disadvantage on Self-Rated Health among Adults in the United States: Evidence from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics.

BACKGROUND: Although overall air quality has improved in the United States, air pollution remains unevenly distributed across neighborhoods, producing disproportionate environmental burdens for minoritized and socioeconomically disadvantaged residents for whom greater exposure to other structurally rooted neighborhood stressors is also more frequent. These interrelated dynamics and layered vulnerabilities each have well-documented associations with physical and psychological health outcomes; however, much remains unknown about the joint effects of environmental hazards and neighborhood socioeconomic factors on self-reported health status. OBJECTIVES: We examined the nexus of air pollution exposure, neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage, and self-rated health (SRH) among adults in the United States. METHODS: This observational study used individual-level data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics merged with contextual information, including neighborhood socioeconomic and air pollution data at the census tract and census block levels, spanning the period of 1999-2015. We estimated ordinary least squares regression models predicting SRH by 10-y average exposures to fine particulate matter [particles ≤2.5µm in aerodynamic diameter (PM2.5)] and neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage while controlling for individual-level correlates of health. We also investigated the interaction effects of air pollution and neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage on SRH. RESULTS: On average, respondents in our sample rated their health as 3.41 on a scale of 1 to 5. Respondents in neighborhoods with higher 10-y average PM2.5 concentrations or socioeconomic disadvantage rated their health more negatively after controlling for covariates [ß=-0.024 (95% CI: -0.034, -0.014); ß=-0.107 (95% CI: -0.163, -0.052), respectively]. We also found that the deleterious associations of PM2.5 exposure with SRH were weaker in the context of greater neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage (ß=0.007; 95% CI: 0.002, 0.011). DISCUSSION: Study results indicate that the effects of air pollution on SRH may be less salient in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods compared with more advantaged areas, perhaps owing to the presence of other more proximate structurally rooted health risks and vulnerabilities in disinvested areas (e.g., lack of economic resources, health access, healthy food options). This intersection may further underscore the importance of meaningful involvement and political power building among community stakeholders on issues concerning the nexus of environmental and socioeconomic justice, particularly in structurally marginalized communities. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP11268.

Gentrification, Mobility, and Exposure to Contextual Social Determinants of Health.

This study uses individual level consumer trace data for 2006 residents of low- and moderate-income neighborhoods for the principal cities of the 100 largest metropolitan regions in the US using their location in 2006 and 2019 to examine exposure to the following four cSDOH: healthcare access (Medically Underserved Areas), socioeconomic condition (Area Deprivation Index), air pollution (NO2, PM 2.5 and PM10), and walkability (National Walkability Index). The results control for individual characteristics and initial neighborhood conditions. Residents of neighborhoods classified as gentrifying were exposed to more favorable cSDOH as of 2006 relative to residents of low- and moderate-income neighborhoods that were not gentrifying in terms of likelihood to be in a MUA, and level of local deprivation and walkability while experiencing similar level of air pollution. As a result of changes in neighborhood characteristics and differential mobility pattern, between 2006 and 2019, individuals who originally lived in gentrifying neighborhoods experienced worse changes in MUAs, ADI, and Walkability Index but a greater improvement in exposure to air pollutants. The negative changes are driven by movers, while stayers actually experience a relative improvement in MUAs and ADI and larger improvements in exposure to air pollutants. The findings indicate that gentrification may contribute to health disparities through changes in exposure to cSDOH through mobility to communities with worse cSDOH among residents of gentrifying neighborhoods although results in terms of exposure to health pollutants are mixed.

Segmented information, segregated outcomes: Housing affordability and neighborhood representation on a voucher-focused online housing platform and three mainstream alternatives.

Online platforms have become an integral component of the housing search process in the United States and other developed contexts, but recent studies have demonstrated that these platforms offer uneven representation of different neighborhoods. In this study, we use listings covering the largest 50 U.S. metropolitan areas to assess how GoSection8, a platform uniquely focused on affordable housing and voucher-assisted households, compares with "mainstream" alternatives of Craigslist, Apartments.com and Zillow. Through descriptive and regression analyses of the housing and neighborhoods represented on these websites and a new way of measuring the distribution of rental housing opportunities, we advance a multisource perspective on the role of online information exchanges in housing search processes. Specifically, we find that GoSection8 and mainstream alternatives capture spatially-segmented information about housing markets, with GoSection8 ads representing units that are more affordable but also more constrained to higher-poverty neighborhoods where assisted households are already concentrated. The findings suggest that disadvantaged households are potentially funneled toward high-poverty, isolated neighborhoods by the operation of stratified information systems available for online housing searches.

Racial disparity in exposure to housing cost burden in the United States: 1980-2017.

This paper uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to analyze Black-White differences in housing cost burden exposure among renter households in the United States from 1980 to 2017, expanding understanding of this phenomenon in two respects. Specifically, we document how much this racial disparity changed among renters over almost four decades and identify how much factors associated with income or housing costs explain Black-White inequality in exposure to housing cost burden. For White households, the net contribution of household, neighborhood, and metropolitan covariates accounts for much of the change in the probability of housing cost burden over time. For Black households, however, the probability of experiencing housing cost burden continued to rise throughout the period of this study, even after controlling for household, neighborhood, and metropolitan covariates. This suggests that unobserved variables like racial discrimination, social networks or employment quality might explain the increasing disparity in cost burden among for Black and White households in the U.S.

Associations between Neighborhood Disadvantage and Dog Walking among Participants in the Dog Aging Project.

Although neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage is negatively related to overall physical activity, prior studies reveal a complex relationship between disadvantage and particular walking behaviors. While disadvantage is associated with reduced recreational walking through a hypothesized "fear-of-crime" mechanism, the built environment in disadvantaged neighborhoods may encourage utilitarian walking. To date, no study has assessed how disadvantage relates to dog walking, a distinct walking behavior that is neither strictly recreational nor utilitarian but represents a key mechanism through which pet ownership may affect human health. We employ a large (n = 19,732) dataset from the Dog Aging Project to understand how neighborhood disadvantage is associated with dog walking when controlling for individual-, household-, and environmental-level factors. We find that dog owners in more disadvantaged neighborhoods report less on-leash walking activity compared to owners in advantaged neighborhoods and discuss the possibility of a fear-of-crime mechanism underlying this association. These findings improve our understanding of the relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and physical function and highlight the need for public health interventions that encourage dog ownership to consider neighborhood disadvantage.

Early life predictors of positive change during the coronavirus disease pandemic.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic is a crisis unprecedented in its size and scope. Yet studies of resilience suggest most individuals will successfully negotiate this challenge and some may even experience growth and positive change. Some evidence suggests that the capacity to enact positive change in the face of adversity may be shaped by early life experiences. METHODS: In a subset of 374 participants (57% female, mean age = 29 years) in the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD), a longitudinal, birth cohort, prospective models were tested to determine whether early life adversities in family and neighborhood contexts predict positive change events in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Childhood family and neighborhood contexts were assessed using a combination of self-report questionnaires and US Census data. Adulthood positive change events (e.g., becoming more appreciative of things usually taken for granted) were assessed using the Epidemic-Pandemic Impacts Inventory (EPII). RESULTS: In regression analyses, neighborhood disadvantage in childhood, measured both by objective and subjective assessments, predicted a higher number of positive change events in response to the COVID-19 pandemic (ß = .18, p = .004 and ß = .15, p = .006, respectively). Examination of the positive change event subscales showed neighborhood disadvantage in childhood predicted increases in events related to 'perspective taking and charitable giving' (ß = .20, p = .022 and ß = .17, p = .002, respectively) and improved 'social relationships' (ß = .18, p = .004 and ß = .13, p = .020, respectively), but not to positive 'health behaviors' (ps > .05). All associations were independent of sociodemographic factors and childhood family dysfunction. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that neighborhood disadvantage in childhood may shape prosocial responses to stress in adulthood, potentially through early life adaptions to stress that are protective when facing adversity. There are several notable implications of the study findings. Although adversity in early life has clear negative impacts, it is possible that adversity experiences may also provide opportunities to develop adaptive strategies that foster resilience and growth when facing stress. Intervention efforts should consider leveraging such stress-adapted strengths to reduce the many negative impacts of early life adversity.

Toward a Cross-Platform Framework: Assessing the Comprehensiveness of Online Rental Listings.

Research on rental housing markets in the United States has traditionally relied on national or local housing surveys. Those sources lack temporal and spatial specificity, limiting their use for tracking short-term changes in local markets. As rental housing ads have transitioned to digital spaces, a growing body of literature has utilized web scraping to analyze listing practices and variations in rental market dynamics. Those studies have primarily relied on one platform, Craigslist, as a source of data. Despite Craigslist's popularity, the authors contend that rental listings from various websites, rather than from individual ones, provide a more comprehensive picture. Using a mixed-methods approach to study listings across various platforms in five metropolitan areas, this article demonstrates considerable variation in both the types of rental units advertised and the features provided across those platforms. The article begins with an account of the birth and consolidation of online rental platforms and emergent characteristics of several selected websites, including the criteria for posting, search parameters, search results priority, and first-page search results. Visualizations are used to compare features such as the 40th percentile of rent, rent distribution, and bedroom size based on scraped data from six online platforms (Padmapper, Forrent.com, Trulia, Zillow, Craigslist, and GoSection8), 2020 Fair Market Rents, and 2019 American Community Survey data. The analyses indicate that online listing platforms target different audiences and offer distinct information on units within those market segments, resulting in markedly different estimates of local rental costs and unit size distribution depending on the platform.

Is geography destiny? Disrupting the relationship between segregation and neighbohrood outcomes.

Considerable research has shown that, in the cross-section, segregation is associated with detrimental neighborhood outcomes for blacks and improved neighborhood outcomes for whites. However, it is unclear whether early-life experiences of segregation shape later-life neighborhood outcomes, whether this association persists for those who migrate out of the metropolitan areas in which they grew up, and how these relationships differ for blacks and whites. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1979 to 2013, we find that the level of segregation experienced during adolescence is associated with significantly worse neighborhood outcomes in adulthood for blacks. However, migrating out of the metropolitan area an individual grew up in substantially moderates these relationships. In contrast, adolescent segregation is associated with improved, or not significantly different, neighborhood outcomes in adulthood for whites. These findings have important implications for theorizing about the mechanisms linking segregation and neighborhood outcomes and for considering potential means of assuaging racial disparities in harmful neighborhood exposures.

Does Hypersegregation Matter for Black-White Socioeconomic Disparities?

Massey and Denton's concept of hypersegregation describes how multiple and distinct forms of black-white segregation lead to high levels of black-white stratification. However, numerous studies assessing the association between segregation and racial stratification applied only one or two dimensions of segregation, neglecting how multiple forms of segregation combine to potentially exacerbate socioeconomic disparities between blacks and whites. We address this by using data from the U.S. Census from 1980 to 2010 and data from the American Community Survey from 2012 to 2016 to assess trajectories for black-white disparities in educational attainment, employment, and neighborhood poverty between metropolitan areas with hypersegregation and black-white segregation, as measured by the dissimilarity index. Using a time-varying measure of segregation types, our results indicate that in some cases, hypersegregated metropolitan areas have been associated with larger black-white socioeconomic disparities beyond those found in metropolitan areas that are highly segregated in terms of dissimilarity but are not hypersegregated. However, the contrasts in black-white socioeconomic inequality between hypersegregated metropolitan areas and those with high segregation largely diminish by the 2012 to 2016 observation.

Kin location and racial disparities in exiting and entering poor neighborhoods.

Blacks and Latinos/as are less likely than Whites to move from a poor neighborhood to a non-poor neighborhood and are more likely to move in the reverse direction. Using individual-level data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1980-2013) and neighborhood-level census data, this study explores the role that the spatial location of familial kin networks plays in explaining these racially and ethnically disparate mobility patterns. Blacks and Latinos/as live closer than Whites to nuclear kin, and they are also more likely than Whites to have kin members living in poor neighborhoods. Close geographic proximity to kin and higher levels of kin neighborhood poverty inhibit moving from a poor to a non-poor neighborhood, and increase the risk of moving from a non-poor to a poor tract. Racial/ethnic differences in kin proximity and kin neighborhood poverty explain a substantial portion of racial gaps in exiting and entering poor neighborhoods.

Residential Segregation and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Ambient Air Pollution.

Race and ethnicity are consequential constructs when it comes to exposure to air pollution. Persistent environmental racial/ethnic inequalities call for attention to identifying the factors that maintain them. We examined associations between racial residential segregation and racial/ethnic inequalities in exposure to three types of air pollutants. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1990-2011), the U.S. Census (1990- 2010), and the Environmental Protection Agency, we tested the independent and joint contributions of race/ethnicity and metropolitan-level residential segregation on individual levels of exposure to air pollution nationwide. We found that racial and ethnic minorities were exposed to significantly higher levels of air pollution compared to Whites. The difference between minorities and Whites in exposure to all three types of air pollution was most pronounced in metropolitan areas with high levels of residential segregation. The environmental inequities observed in this study call for public health and policy initiatives to ameliorate the sources of racial/ethnic gaps in pollution exposure. Given the links between the physical environment and health, addressing such uneven environmental burdens may be a promising way to improve population health and decrease racial/ethnic inequalities therein.

Early-Life Air Pollution Exposure, Neighborhood Poverty, and Childhood Asthma in the United States, 1990⁻2014.

Ambient air pollution is a well-known risk factor of various asthma-related outcomes, however, past research has often focused on acute exacerbations rather than asthma development. This study draws on a population-based, multigenerational panel dataset from the United States to assess the association of childhood asthma risk with census block-level, annual-average air pollution exposure measured during the prenatal and early postnatal periods, as well as effect modification by neighborhood poverty. Findings suggest that early-life exposures to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a marker of traffic-related pollution, and fine particulate matter (PM2.5), a mixture of industrial and other pollutants, are positively associated with subsequent childhood asthma diagnosis (OR = 1.25, 95% CI = 1.10⁻1.41 and OR = 1.25, 95% CI = 1.06⁻1.46, respectively, per interquartile range (IQR) increase in each pollutant (NO2 IQR = 8.51 ppb and PM2.5 IQR = 4.43 µ/m³)). These effects are modified by early-life neighborhood poverty exposure, with no or weaker effects in moderate- and low- (versus high-) poverty areas. This work underscores the importance of a holistic, developmental approach to elucidating the interplay of social and environmental contexts that may create conditions for racial-ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in childhood asthma risk.

Foreclosure migration and neighborhood outcomes: Moving toward segregation and disadvantage.

The US housing crisis during the late 2000s was arguably the most devastating residential disaster of the last century, sending millions of families into foreclosure and destroying billions in household wealth. An understudied aspect of the crisis was the spike in local migration that followed the foreclosure surge. In this paper, we assess the residential consequences of these moves, by exploring how foreclosure-induced migration affected the racial and socioeconomic composition of affected families' neighborhoods. To do so, we use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to track foreclosure, migration, and neighborhood outcomes for samples of white, black, and Hispanic homeowners. Findings from our analysis show clearly that foreclosure was linked to migration to less white and more residentially disadvantaged neighborhoods, with foreclosed Hispanic householders, in particular, tending to move to poorer and more racially isolated neighborhoods.

Is in utero exposure to maternal socioeconomic disadvantage related to offspring ovarian reserve in adulthood?

BACKGROUND: Because the ovarian follicle pool is established in utero, adverse exposures during this period may be especially impactful on the size and health of the initial follicle endowment, potentially shaping trajectories of ovarian follicle loss and the eventual onset of menopause. Building on a robust literature linking socioeconomic status (SES) and menopausal timing, the current study examined adverse prenatal exposures related to maternal SES, hypothesizing that greater maternal socioeconomic disadvantage would be associated with lower ovarian reserve in the adult offspring. METHODS: In a healthy, community-based sub-sample (n = 350) of reproductive age participants in the OVA Study (2006-2011), prenatal maternal SES was examined in relation to two biomarkers of ovarian reserve, antimullerian hormone (AMH) and antral follicle count (AFC). Prenatal maternal SES was assessed indirectly using maternal addresses abstracted from participant birth certificates, geocoded, and linked to US Census-derived variables, including neighborhood-level characteristics: education (% of individuals with a HS diploma); poverty (% of families below the poverty line); unemployment (% of individuals > 16 years who are unemployed); and income (median family income). RESULTS: In separate covariate-adjusted linear regression models (following the backward elimination of main effects with P > .10), greater maternal neighborhood education was related to higher ovarian reserve as marked by higher levels of offspring AMH (beta = .142, P < .001) and AFC (beta = .092, P < .10) with models accounting for 19.6% and 21.5% of the variance in AMH and AFC, respectively. In addition, greater maternal neighborhood poverty was related to lower ovarian reserve as marked by lower offspring AMH (beta = -.144, P < .01), with the model accounting for 19.5% of the variance in AMH. CONCLUSIONS: Maternal socioeconomic disadvantage measured indirectly at the neighborhood level was associated with lower ovarian reserve among the adult offspring, independently of offspring SES and other potential confounding factors. This suggests SES-related adversity exposures may have a detrimental impact on the size or health of the initial follicle endowment, leading to accelerated follicle loss over time.

Migration, Mobility, and Neighborhood Attainment: Using the PSID to Understand the Processes of Racial Stratification.

In this article we describe the considerable influence of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) on research on residential migration, mobility, and neighborhood attainment, as well as the role of PSID-based research in housing policy debates. We review some of the central research findings and key discoveries that have come from analyses that have used the PSID. We then present new research, using PSID data that are linked to geographic data, to demonstrate how geographic moves are associated with changes in neighborhood poverty rates. The relationship differs markedly for blacks and whites, and our results add to a body of work that shows sharp racial differences in residential context, and the role that personal migration plays in shaping this stratification. Finally, we use these findings and the shortcomings of past research to prescribe ways that the PSID could be enhanced to understand more about migration dynamics and processes of residential stratification.

The effects of air pollution on individual psychological distress.

This study is the first of its kind to utilize longitudinal, nationally representative panel data from the United States to assess the relationship between exposure to air pollution and reports of psychological distress. Using annual-average measures of air pollution in respondents' census blocks of residence we find that over the period 1999-2011 particulate matter 2.5 is significantly associated with increased psychological distress; this association remains even after controlling for a robust set of demographic, socioeconomic, and health-related covariates. This study suggests that public health efforts to reduce the personal and societal costs of mental illness should consider addressing not only individual characteristics and factors in the social environment, but also underexplored facets of the physical environment such as air pollution.