While Some Things Change, Do Others Stay the Same? The Heterogeneity of Neighborhood Health Returns to Gentrification

How long-term changes in neighborhood and school racial composition shape children's behavior problems

Relatively few neighborhood-focused studies explicitly model the relationship between neighborhood change- i.e., racial change within a neighborhood-and individual mental health, instead focusing on the current composition of the neighborhood or on the outcomes of individuals that switch neighborhood contexts via moves. Further, while neighborhoods and schools are interconnected, researchers tend to focus on only one of these contexts in their work. Combining family and student data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) with multiple waves of neighborhood and school administrative data, our study extends current scholarship in this area by explicitly focusing on the relationship between exposure to neighborhood and school racial change-i.e., change occurring within the neighborhood or school in the prior decade-and the behavior problems of current students. We further analyze how associations vary: 1) by student race; 2) between newcomers to the neighborhood and those that lived in the neighborhood as it underwent demographic change; 3) and in neighborhoods with higher proportions of same-race residents. Our findings suggest that the relationship between local neighborhood contexts and the behavioral problems of children is nuanced and depends on the racial trajectories-change or stability-of neighborhoods, schools, and the interaction of both. Compared to longer-term residents, White newcomers tended to have more behavioral problems across racially changing and stable neighborhoods alike, regardless of the racial trajectories observed in the local school. Our results align with past work documenting the protective effect of same-race peers for Black children. Conversely, we find White students exhibit greater behavioral problems in settings with very high proportions of same-race peers, particularly in neighborhoods and schools that are simultaneously becoming increasingly racially isolated.

The health implications of neighborhood networks based on daily mobility in US cities

A large body of research has been dedicated to understanding the neighborhood conditions that impact health, which outcomes are affected, and how these associations vary by demographic and socioeconomic neighborhood and individual characteristics. This literature has focused mostly on the neighborhoods in which individuals reside, thus failing to recognize that residents across race/ethnicity and class spend a non-trivial amount of their time in neighborhoods far from their residential settings. To address this gap, we use mobile phone data from the company SafeGraph to compare racial inequality in neighborhood socioeconomic advantage exposure across three scales: the neighborhoods that residents live in, their adjacent neighborhoods, and the neighborhoods that they regularly visit. We found that the socioeconomic advantage levels in neighborhood networks differ from the levels at the residential and adjacent scales across all ethnoracial neighborhoods. Furthermore, socioeconomic advantage at the network level is associated with diabetes and hypertension prevalence above and beyond its impact at the residential and adjacent levels. We also find ethnoracial differences in these associations, with greater beneficial consequences of network socioeconomic advantage exposure on hypertension and diabetes for white neighborhoods. Future social determinants of health research needs to reconceptualize exposure to include the larger neighborhood network that a community is embedded in based on where their residents travel to and from.

Immigrant Older Adults' Experiences of Aging in Place and Their Neighborhoods: A Qualitative Systematic Review

Engaging in one's neighborhood fosters independence, promotes social connectedness, improves quality of life, and increases life expectancy in older adults. There is a lack of evidence synthesis on immigrant older adults' neighborhood perceptions and experiences, essential for addressing neighborhood-level influences on aging in place. This study systematically synthesizes qualitative evidence on immigrant older adults' perceptions and experiences of their neighborhoods. A comprehensive search was conducted from inception to 5 April 2023, in multiple databases. This review considered studies including immigrant older adults aged ≥60 years, included studies from any country where the neighborhood was the focus, and only considered qualitative data while excluding review studies, theoretical publications, and protocols. Eligible studies were appraised using the JBI critical appraisal checklist for qualitative research. The Joanna Briggs Institute meta-aggregation approach was used to synthesize findings, and the ConQual approach established confidence in the synthesis. A total of 30 studies were included. Most studies were conducted in North America and explored phenomena such as aging in place, social capital, social cohesion, sense of community, and life satisfaction. Key contextual factors were walkable safe access to social spaces, accessible transportation to amenities, social cohesion with neighbors, and pre-migration neighborhood experiences. Immigrant older adults have varied experiences related to their sense of belonging and social cohesion. Factors such as racial discrimination, feeling unsafe, and social isolation contributed to negative perceptions. This review highlights the need for inclusive neighborhoods that align with the needs and values of immigrant older adults aging in place.

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.