Child health in low-income neighborhoods: The unexpected relationship with neighborhood disorder and other aspects of distress

Abstract

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.

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