Neighbourhood Inequality, Relative Deprivation and Self-perceived
Health Status
by Feng Hou and John Myles
Business and Labour Market Analysis Division
Analytical Studies Branch research paper series, No. 228
Context
Most of Canada's major metropolitan areas have experienced neighbourhood
concentration of low-income and growing inequality in the last two decades.
Few studies have examined the connection between neighbourhood economic
conditions and population health.
Objectives
The study examines whether health status, as reported by respondents,
is associated with the income and education mix of their residential
neighbourhoods, in addition to the well-established finding that individuals
with higher incomes tend to be healthier.
Findings
The study finds that most neighbourhoods in these large urban centres
are economically heterogeneous, with almost as much variation in incomes
within each neighbourhood as across their city as a whole. In other
words, Canada's largest cities do not have that many neighbourhoods
where residents mostly have either low income or are affluent. In fact,
most low-income individuals in these cities do not live in neighbourhoods
of concentrated low income.
This study finds that when an individual's socio-economic characteristics
are accounted for, high income inequality at the neighbourhood level
is not associated with reduced self-rated health. However, in neighbourhoods
with a large proportion of affluent families and well-educated individuals,
self-reported health status was higher among low-income persons than
was the case for their counterparts in less affluent neighbourhoods.
These results suggest that low-income individuals living neighbourhoods
with more highly-educated and higher income families may benefit somewhat
from richer community resources, such as recreational facilities, schools,
family and health services.
Data sources
1996/1997 National Population Health Survey and 1996 census
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