Neighborhood Socioeconomic Environment and Incidence of Coronary Heart Disease: A Follow-up Study of 25,319 Women and Men in Sweden

In this study, the authors examined whether neighborhood socioeconomic environment predicted incident coronary heart disease after adjustment for individual-level characteristics. A random sample of the Swedish population (25,319 women and men aged 35-74 years) was interviewed between 1986 and 1993 and was followed through December 1997 for incident coronary heart disease (1,189 events). Neighborhood socioeconomic environment was defined by small-area market statistics (6,145 neighborhoods) and measured by two indicators: neighborhood education (proportion of people with less than 10 years of education in the neighborhood) and neighborhood income (proportion of people with incomes in the lowest national income quartile). Separate multilevel Cox proportional hazards models showed that low neighborhood education and low neighborhood income each predicted incident coronary heart disease after adjustment for age, sex, and individual-level education and income (hazard ratios were 1.25 and 1.23, respectively). The authors conclude that neighborhood socioeconomic environment predicts incident coronary heart disease, having a significant effect on coronary heart disease risk beyond the individual effect.