Neighborhood Self-Selection: The Role of Pre-Move Health Factors on the Built and Socioeconomic Environment

Peter James, Jaime E. Hart, Mariana C. Arcaya, Diane Feskanich, Francine Laden and S.V. Subramanian
Additional contact information
Peter James: Department of Epidemiology, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Jaime E. Hart: Department of Environmental Health, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Mariana C. Arcaya: Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Diane Feskanich: Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Francine Laden: Department of Epidemiology, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02215, USA
S.V. Subramanian: Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA

IJERPH, 2015, vol. 12, issue 10, 1-16

Abstract: Residential self-selection bias is a concern in studies of neighborhoods and health. This bias results from health behaviors predicting neighborhood choice. To quantify this bias, we examined associations between pre-move health factors (body mass index, walking, and total physical activity) and post-move neighborhood factors (County Sprawl Index, Census tract socioeconomic status (SES)) in the Nurses’ Health Study (n = 14,159 moves from 1986–2008). Individuals in the highest quartile of pre-move BMI (BMI > 28.4) compared to the lowest quartile (BMI < 22.5) moved to counties that averaged 2.57 points lower on the sprawl index (95% confidence interval ?3.55, ?1.59) indicating that individuals moved to less dense counties; however, no associations were observed for pre-move walking nor total physical activity. Individuals with higher pre-move BMI tended to move to Census tracts with lower median income and home values and higher levels of poverty. Analyses examining the change in neighborhood environments after a move demonstrated that healthy pre-move behaviors were associated with moves to worse socioeconomic environments. This type of self-selection would bias results downward, underestimating the true relationship between SES and physical activity. Generally, the magnitudes of associations between pre-move health factors and neighborhood measures were small and indicated that residential self-selection was not a major source of bias in analyses in this population.

Keywords: residential self-selection; built environment; socioeconomic status; body mass index; physical activity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/10/12489/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/10/12489/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:12:y:2015:i:10:p:12489-12504:d:56830

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().