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Environment and Its Education

Neighborhood characteristics have an impact on health beyond individual socioeconomic status. Studies have found that living in disadvantaged neighborhoods is an independent risk factor for poor health outcomes. A recent study found that moving from a poor to wealthier neighborhood significantly improved mental health and reduced obesity rates. Disadvantaged neighborhoods tend to have more air pollution, lack of amenities like grocery stores and clinics, and signs of social disorder, negatively impacting health.

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40 views1 page

Environment and Its Education

Neighborhood characteristics have an impact on health beyond individual socioeconomic status. Studies have found that living in disadvantaged neighborhoods is an independent risk factor for poor health outcomes. A recent study found that moving from a poor to wealthier neighborhood significantly improved mental health and reduced obesity rates. Disadvantaged neighborhoods tend to have more air pollution, lack of amenities like grocery stores and clinics, and signs of social disorder, negatively impacting health.

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Finally, measures of income, poverty, and deprivation have been extended to incorporate the

dimension of place. Growing research, utilizing multilevel study designs, has conceptualized
economic status as an attribute of neighborhoods (Kawachi and Berkman, 2003). These
studies have revealed that residing in a disadvantaged (or high-poverty) neighborhood
imposes an additional risk to health beyond the effects of individual SES. A recent
Department of Housing and Urban Development randomized experiment in neighborhood
mobility, the so-called Moving To Opportunity study, found results consistent with
observational data: Moving from a poor to a wealthier neighborhood was associated with
significant improvements in adult mental health and rates of obesity (Kling et al., 2004).
Disadvantaged neighborhoods are often characterized by adverse physical, social, and service
environments, including exposure to more air pollution via proximity to heavy traffic, a lack
of local amenities such as grocery stores, health clinics, and safe venues for physical activity,
and exposure to signs of social disorder (Kawachi and Berkman, 2003). In other words, the
relevant social and cultural “environments” for the production of health include not only an
individual’s immediate personal environment (e.g., his/ her family), but also the broader
social contexts such as the community in which a person resides.

Occupational Status
The third standard component of SES that typically is measured by social scientists is
occupational status, which summarizes the levels of prestige, authority, power, and other
resources that are associated with differ ent positions in the labor market. Occupational status
has the advantage over income of being a more permanent marker of access to economic
resources.
Three main traditions can be discerned in the way in which different disciplines have
approached the measurement of aspects of occupations relevant to health. In the traditional
occupational health field, researchers have focused on the physical aspects of the job, such as
exposure to chemical toxins or physical hazards of injury (Slote, 1987). In the fields of
occupational health psychology and social epidemiology, researchers have focused on
characterizing the psychosocial work environment, including measures of job security,
psychological job demands and stress, and decision latitude (control over the work process)
(Karasek and Theorell, 1990). Finally, the sociological tradition has tended to focus on
occupational status, which includes both objective indicators (e.g., educational requirements
associated with different jobs) as well as subjective indicators (e.g., the level of prestige
associated with different jobs in the occupational hierarchy) (Berkman and Macintyre, 1997).

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