Black, white, or green? The effects of racial composition and socioeconomic status on neighborhood-level tobacco outlet density

ABSTRACT

Objective: To compare predominantly-Black and predominantly-White Maryland areas with similar socioeconomic status to examine the role of both race and socioeconomic status on tobacco outlet availability and tobacco outlet access.

Design: Maryland tobacco outlet addresses were geocoded with 2011–2015 American Community Survey sociodemographic data. Two-sample t-tests were conducted comparing the mean values of sociodemographic variables and tobacco outlet density per Census Tract, and spatial lag based regression models were conducted to analyze the direct association between covariables and tobacco outlet density while accounting for spatial dependence between and within jurisdictions.

Results: Predominantly-White jurisdictions had lower tobacco outlet availability and access than predominantly-Black jurisdictions, despite similar socioeconomic status. Spatial lag model results showed that median household income and vacant houses had consistent associations with tobacco outlet density across most of the jurisdictions analyzed, and place-based spatial lag models showed direct associations between predominantly-Black jurisdictions and tobacco outlet availability and access.

Conclusion: Predominantly-White areas have lower levels of tobacco outlet density than predominantly-Black areas, despite both areas having similar socioeconomic statuses.

KEYWORDS:

• Tobacco outlets
• Census Tracts
• race
• socioeconomic status
• income

Acknowledgements

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse [grant number T32DA007292] and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities [grant number U54MD000214, R01AG054363 and K02AG059140].