Gradients in Child Health Based on Neighborhood Characteristics

The effect of neighborhood characteristics has been shown to be related to child health in several studies. Less work has focused on cumulative effects of neighborhood conditions on child health, and there is a lack of many nationally representative studies. We analyzed the association between neighborhood characteristics and child health in a nationally representative sample using the National Survey of Children's Health, 2011. Using logistic regression models that were nationally weighted, we used neighborhood characteristic variables to predict the odds of children having poor health. We found that, when controlling for age, gender, and race/ethnicity, there was an significant positive relationship between poor child health status and the following: 1) lack of neighborhood amenities (parks, recreation centers, and libraries); 2) poor neighborhood conditions (litter, rundown housing, vandalism); 3) lack of social capital (neighbors help each other out, neighbors watch each other's children, neighbors count on each other, neighbors are trustworthy with children), and lack of percieved safety (how often people feel safe in the neighborhood and school). When adding family income and parental education as covariates to the aforementioned models, nearly all of the effects remained significant. Finally, we looked at the combination of all of these social characteristic variables, constructing a nighborhood condition index. We found that our index combining all neighborhood characteristics showed similar results - the fewer neighborhood resources a child had, the more likely they were to have poor health, even when controlling for all of the aforementioned covariates (including family income and parental education). These data suggest that the cumulative lack of neighborhood amenities may be leading to the poorer health of children living in these neighborhoods, and that neighborhod quality should be considered for exploration as an intervention target for child health.