IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v66y2008i6p1241-1255.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Neighbourhood effects on health: Does it matter where you draw the boundaries?

Author

Listed:
  • Flowerdew, Robin
  • Manley, David J.
  • Sabel, Clive E.

Abstract

There has been considerable discussion in health geography and related areas of neighbourhood effects on health: the idea that people's health in one geographical area may be influenced not only by the composition of that area's population, but also by the area's geographical context. Hence, the healthiness or otherwise of the neighbourhood may have an important effect on local people's health. Although neighbourhoods and their boundaries are sometimes obvious to local residents, it is more common to find considerable disagreement on the size and contents of a neighbourhood. In this paper, we use British census Enumeration Districts as building blocks to construct alternative zonal systems, and experiment to see if neighbourhoods defined in different ways have similar implications for health. The well known modifiable areal unit problem shows that analytical conclusions may differ substantially according to how data are aggregated. Boundaries can be drawn to maximize equality of size, compactness of shape, homogeneity in social composition, accordance with 'natural' boundaries, and probably many other factors; which of these criteria are more effective in defining zones relevant to health? One conclusion is that the effect of neighbourhood conditions should be looked at using several different ways to define neighbourhoods, and that the size and composition of these neighbourhoods may be different in different parts of a study area.

Suggested Citation

  • Flowerdew, Robin & Manley, David J. & Sabel, Clive E., 2008. "Neighbourhood effects on health: Does it matter where you draw the boundaries?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(6), pages 1241-1255, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:66:y:2008:i:6:p:1241-1255
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(07)00627-2
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. M Tranmer & D G Steel, 1998. "Using Census Data to Investigate the Causes of the Ecological Fallacy," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 30(5), pages 817-831, May.
    2. A S Fotheringham & D W S Wong, 1991. "The Modifiable Areal Unit Problem in Multivariate Statistical Analysis," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 23(7), pages 1025-1044, July.
    3. S Openshaw & L Rao, 1995. "Algorithms for Reengineering 1991 Census Geography," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 27(3), pages 425-446, March.
    4. Andrew McCulloch, 2001. "Ward-Level Deprivation and Individual Social and Economic Outcomes in the British Household Panel Study," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 33(4), pages 667-684, April.
    5. Laurence S. Moss, 2003. "Editor's Introduction," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(2), pages 315-318, April.
    6. repec:bla:ajecsc:v:62:y:2003:i:4:p:645-648 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Manfred M. Fischer & Arthur Getis (ed.), 1997. "Recent Developments in Spatial Analysis," Advances in Spatial Science, Springer, number 978-3-662-03499-6, February.
    8. Cockings, Samantha & Martin, David, 2005. "Zone design for environment and health studies using pre-aggregated data," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(12), pages 2729-2742, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sabel, C.E. & Kihal, W. & Bard, D. & Weber, C., 2013. "Creation of synthetic homogeneous neighbourhoods using zone design algorithms to explore relationships between asthma and deprivation in Strasbourg, France," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 110-121.
    2. Cockings, Samantha & Martin, David, 2005. "Zone design for environment and health studies using pre-aggregated data," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(12), pages 2729-2742, June.
    3. Shortt, Niamh K. & Moore, Adrian & Coombes, Mike & Wymer, Colin, 2005. "Defining regions for locality health care planning: a multidimensional approach," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(12), pages 2715-2727, June.
    4. Wang, Lu & Hu, Wei, 2013. "Immigrant health, place effect and regional disparities in Canada," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 8-17.
    5. Chunzhu Wei & Mark Padgham & Pablo Cabrera Barona & Thomas Blaschke, 2017. "Scale-Free Relationships between Social and Landscape Factors in Urban Systems," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-19, January.
    6. Gift Dumedah & Nadine Schuurman & Wanhong Yang, 2008. "Minimizing effects of scale distortion for spatially grouped census data using rough sets," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 47-69, March.
    7. Irene L. Hudson & Linda Moore & Eric J. Beh & David G. Steel, 2010. "Ecological inference techniques: an empirical evaluation using data describing gender and voter turnout at New Zealand elections, 1893–1919," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 173(1), pages 185-213, January.
    8. Spielman, Seth E. & Yoo, Eun-hye, 2009. "The spatial dimensions of neighborhood effects," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(6), pages 1098-1105, March.
    9. Swetnam, R.D. & Harrison-Curran, S.K. & Smith, G.R., 2017. "Quantifying visual landscape quality in rural Wales: A GIS-enabled method for extensive monitoring of a valued cultural ecosystem service," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 26(PB), pages 451-464.
    10. Teman, Elly, 2008. "The social construction of surrogacy research: An anthropological critique of the psychosocial scholarship on surrogate motherhood," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(7), pages 1104-1112, October.
    11. Jin, Peizhen & Mangla, Sachin Kumar & Song, Malin, 2021. "Moving towards a sustainable and innovative city: Internal urban traffic accessibility and high-level innovation based on platform monitoring data," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 235(C).
    12. Juergen Bitzer & Erkan Goeren, 2018. "Foreign Aid and Subnational Development: A Grid Cell Analysis," Working Papers V-407-18, University of Oldenburg, Department of Economics, revised Mar 2018.
    13. repec:asg:wpaper:1012 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Anne Bolster & Simon Burgess & Ron Johnston & Kelvyn Jones & Carol Propper & Rebecca Sarker, 2007. "Neighbourhoods, households and income dynamics: a semi-parametric investigation of neighbourhood effects," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(1), pages 1-38, January.
    15. Roberto Ercole & Robert O'neill, 2017. "The Influence of Agglomeration Externalities on Manufacturing Growth Within Indonesian Locations," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 91-126, March.
    16. Sevrin Waights, 2019. "The preservation of historic districts—is it worth it?," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(2), pages 433-464.
    17. Espinosa, Cristina, 2013. "The riddle of leaving the oil in the soil—Ecuador's Yasuní-ITT project from a discourse perspective," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 27-36.
    18. Jordy Meekes & Wolter H. J. Hassink, 2023. "Endogenous local labour markets, regional aggregation and agglomeration economies," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(1), pages 13-25, January.
    19. Briant, A. & Combes, P.-P. & Lafourcade, M., 2010. "Dots to boxes: Do the size and shape of spatial units jeopardize economic geography estimations?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 287-302, May.
    20. Paolo Veneri, 2018. "Urban spatial structure in OECD cities: Is urban population decentralising or clustering?," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 97(4), pages 1355-1374, November.
    21. Stephen Gibbons & Anne Green & Paul Gregg & Stephen Machin, 2005. "Is Britain Pulling Apart? Area Disparities in Employment, Education and Crime," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 05/120, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:66:y:2008:i:6:p:1241-1255. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.