A Genetically Informed Study of Neighborhoods and Health: Results From the MIDUS Twin Sample

Jennifer W RobinettePhD, Christopher R BeamPhD and Deborah CarrPhD

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2020, vol. 75, issue 5, 1072-1081

Abstract: ObjectivesTo examine whether neighborhood income and neighborhood safety concerns influence multisystem physiological risk after adjusting for genetic and environmental selection effects that may have biased previous tests of this association.MethodsWe used structural equation modeling with a genetically informed sample of 686 male and female twin pairs in the Midlife in the United States Study II (2004).ResultsControlling for additive genetic and shared environmental processes that may have biased neighborhood–health links in previous examinations, higher neighborhood safety concerns were associated with less physiological risk among women but not men.DiscussionOur findings suggest a possible causal role of neighborhood features for a measure of physiological risk that is associated with the development of disease. Efforts to increase neighborhood safety, perhaps through increased street lighting or neighborhood watch programs, may improve community-level health.

Keywords: Between–within family models; Neighborhoods income; Neighborhood safety; Physiological risk; Twin data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gby157 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:geronb:v:75:y:2020:i:5:p:1072-1081.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B is currently edited by Psychological Sciences - S. Duke Han, PhD and Social Sciences - Jessica A Kelley, PhD, FGSA

More articles in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B from The Gerontological Society of America Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().