Do Publicly Funded Neighborhood Investments Impact Individual-Level Health-Related Outcomes? A Longitudinal Study of Two Neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, PA from 2011 to 2018

Abstract

Research examining the relationship between a neighborhood’s built environment and resident health has largely either used a static, cross-sectional research design or focused on the neighborhood in its entirety, making it difficult to understand the relationship between specific dynamic neighborhood characteristics and individual well-being. We use longitudinal data from the Pittsburgh Research on Neighborhood Change and Health (PHRESH) studies to assess the relationship between publicly funded neighborhood investments between 2011 and 2018 and five health-related outcomes: food insecurity, stress, perceived neighborhood safety, neighborhood satisfaction, and dietary quality. We additionally determine whether the distance between an individual’s place of residence and the investment affects the magnitude of associations. Using individual and year fixed effects models, we find that when measured at the neighborhood level, an increase by one standard deviation (SD) in investments (about $130 million) is associated with decreased food insecurity (−0.294 SD), increased safety (0.231 SD), and increased neighborhood satisfaction (0.201 SD) among adults who remain in the study for at least two waves of data collection. We also analyze specific investment types and find that commercial investments are largely driving the changes in food insecurity, safety, and neighborhood satisfaction, while business and residential investments are correlated with the decrease in stress.

Keywords:

• Built environment
• neighborhood
• USA
• food insecurity

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Neighborhood-level controls are: median household income; the percentage of households receiving public assistance; the percentage of households who work in a management, business, science, or arts occupation; the percentage of households whose incomes fall below the poverty line; the unemployment rate, and the percentage of households who have received a high school education or higher.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rebecca B. Smith

Rebecca B. Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on questions of geographic inequality and its intersection with housing and health policy.

Matthew D. Baird

Matthew D. Baird is an economist for the RAND Corporation and co-director for the Center for Causal Inference. His research focuses on understanding labor and education policies to improve outcomes for disadvantaged populations.

Gerald P. Hunter

Gerald P. Hunter is a programmer for the RAND Corporation. His research interests include the built environment, community and economic development, and K-12 education.

Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar

Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar is a statistician at the RAND Corporation and leader of the RAND Statistics Group. Her work focuses on sampling design, survey methods, evaluations, nonresponse, longitudinal and multilevel methods.

Andrea S. Richardson

Andrea S. Richardson is a Senior Policy Researcher at RAND. Her research focus is nutrition epidemiology and encompasses the social and biological risk factors that underlie obesity throughout the life course.

Jonathan H. Cantor

Jonathan H. Cantor is a policy researcher at RAND. His key research interests are in health policies related to obesity, substance use disorder, mental health, pharmaceutical use, and other health behaviors.

Tamara Dubowitz

Tamara Dubowitz is a social epidemiologist and Senior Policy Researcher at RAND. Her research examines health inequities and has focused on the role of the social and built environment in the health and wellbeing of residents.