As individual-level explanations have generally proven insufficient for explaining racial differences in health, researchers have increasingly turned to residential contexts as a source of population health disparities. Residential segregation is a key defining characteristic of the American landscape and a powerful force for explaining racial inequality. Furthermore, segregation has been found to be a key explanatory mechanism for understand racial disparities in health through its impact on individual and neighborhood level socioeconomic status, discrimination and race-related stressors, and neighborhood quality. In this dissertation, I draw on life course perspectives and stress process models of health to explore how the distribution of social contexts along racial divisions are associated with physical health outcomes among children.
Using longitudinal data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 data (ECLS-K), I address three specific research questions regarding the role of residential segregation on child well-being. First, what is the relationship between residential segregation and child health outcomes such as obesity, asthma, and parent-rated health, and are the effects of segregation cumulative over the early life course? Second, how do neighborhood racial/ethnic tensions and social cohesion work in tandem to influence child health, and do these impacts vary by race? Third, does residential segregation exacerbate the negative effects of family stressful events on health outcomes for school-aged children?
I find that the relationship between segregation and physical well-being varies by race, and cumulative measures of segregation are more powerful predictors of childhood health than indicators captured at a single point in time. Moreover, parental involvement in school programs, as a measure of social cohesion, is protective against negative health outcomes for White and Hispanic children, even in neighborhoods characterized by high levels of racial tensions, and is more predictive for some diseases (obesity) than others (asthma). Finally, residential segregation measures do not exacerbate the negative effect of stress events on child health. Given these findings, it is apparent that the neighborhood racial context plays a key but complex role in producing and acerbating child health inequalities during the early part of the life course and may set the stage for the further entrenchment of these disparities as individuals age.