Methodological and Substantive Advances Through Unique Data Collaboration (2024) – Department of Sociology – UW–Madison

Adverse neighborhood conditions are associated with poorer health outcomes, but the health effects of cumulative exposure to adverse neighborhood conditions over the lifetime have been understudied. Using up to 50 years of residential histories and spatiotemporally related neighborhood conditions for 4,177 adults from the Wisconsin Health Survey (SHOW), we developed four operational approaches to characterize cumulative (dis)advantageous neighborhood conditions over the lifetime. We estimated associations with self-reported general health outcomes and compared them to estimates using neighborhood (dis)advantageous conditions at study enrollment.When assessing cumulative exposure at the finest time scale (approach 4), neighborhood transportation constraints (OR = 1.21, 95% CI: 1.08, 1.36), residential turnover (OR = 1.20, 95% CI: 1.07, 1.34), lack of education (OR = 1.17, 95% CI: 1.04, 1.32), racial segregation (OR = 1.20, 95% CI: 1.04, 1.38), and median household income (OR = 0.85, 95% CI: 0.75, 0.97) were significantly associated with risk of fair or poor health. For composite neighborhood disadvantage, cumulative exposure (OR = 1.05, 95% CI: 1.02, 1.08) had a stronger association than cross-sectional exposure (OR = 1.03, 95% CI: 1.01, 1.06), highlighting the importance of a life-course approach to measuring cumulative exposure, as single-point-in-time neighborhood measures will underestimate the neighborhood-health relationship.