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Child health in low‐income neighborhoods: The unexpected relationship with neighborhood disorder and other aspects of distress
Author(s) -
Zuberi Anita,
Teixeira Samantha
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.585
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1520-6629
pISSN - 0090-4392
DOI - 10.1002/jcop.21858
Subject(s) - residence , odds , poverty , informal social control , psychology , collective efficacy , low income , environmental health , sociology , socioeconomics , social control , social psychology , logistic regression , medicine , demography , economic growth , economics , social science
There is substantial evidence linking child health and neighborhood of residence. However, most studies focus on poverty, paying less attention to other social and environmental factors that vary across low‐income neighborhoods. Using data from the Making Connections initiative, we examine the relationship between child health and neighborhood factors, including safety, social cohesion, informal social control, collective efficacy, disorder, and poverty, across a sample of children living in low‐income neighborhoods (N = 3,013). We use multilevel modeling to account for clustering at the household and block level. Results show that neighborhood disorder is related to child health in an unexpected direction: More disorder is related to lower odds of a child having fair or poor health. Similarly, informal social control and safety are related to greater odds of child fair or poor health. We underscore the importance of neighborhood conditions for child health and highlight the unexpected direction of these relationships.