Social and Economic Correlations of Health Outcomes in Marion County, Indiana

It is widely held that people in the lowest socio-economic status (SES) suffer poor health, but uniform standards to measure SES are just now beginning to emerge; this study attempts to validate the methodology of Dr. Nancy Krieger by taking her method of analysis to a different location and different population. This study is designed to validate the methodology of Dr. Krieger. In this study we sought to measure the relationship between area-based socio-economic measurements and various health outcomes and disease burdens using census tracts as the unit of analysis. This methodology is based on Nancy Krieger's geocoding project, which indicates that SES is inversely related to positive health outcomes. Each census tract was assigned an SES z-score, based on socio-economic measures from the 2000 US census including median household income, median home value, educational achievement level, poverty status, and occupational class. Using preexisting datasets from the US Census Bureau that contain census tract data and that demonstrate health outcome rates, correlations between the z-scores of SES and health outcomes were determined. Health outcomes measured for this study include prevalence of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, normal body mass index; incidences of chlamydia, gonorrhea, low birth weight, and homicide, and age at death. Correlations were found between the SES z-scores and health outcome variables, and correlations held throughout age, race and sex stratifications. These correlations demonstrated that as socio-economic status decreases, disease prevalence increases.