• Anne Vernez Moudon, Andrea J Cook, Jared Ulmer, Philip M Hurvitz, and Adam Drewnowski.
• Department of Urban Design and Planning, University of Washington, Seattle, 98195, USA. moudon@u.washington.edu
• Am J Prev Med. 2011 Jul 1; 41 (1): 889788-97.

BackgroundMeasures of neighborhood deprivation used in health research are typically based on conventional area-based SES.PurposeThe aim of this study is to examine new data and measures of SES for use in health research. Specifically, assessed property values are introduced as a new individual-level metric of wealth and tested for their ability to substitute for conventional area-based SES as measures of neighborhood deprivation.MethodsThe analysis was conducted in 2010 using data from 1922 participants in the 2008-2009 survey of the Seattle Obesity Study (SOS). It compared the relative strength of the association between the individual-level neighborhood wealth metric (assessed property values) and area-level SES measures (including education, income, and percentage above poverty as single variables, and as the composite Singh index) on the binary outcome fair/poor general health status. Analyses were adjusted for gender, categoric age, race, employment status, home ownership, and household income.ResultsThe neighborhood wealth measure was more predictive of fair/poor health status than area-level SES measures, calculated either as single variables or as indices (lower DIC measures for all models). The odds of having a fair/poor health status decreased by 0.85 (95% CI=0.77, 0.93) per $50,000 increase in neighborhood property values after adjusting for individual-level SES measures.ConclusionsThe proposed individual-level metric of neighborhood wealth, if replicated in other areas, could replace area-based SES measures, thus simplifying analyses of contextual effects on health.Copyright © 2011 American Journal of Preventive Medicine. All rights reserved.

15 keywords...

hide…