title: Two Mechanisms: The Role of Social Capital and Industrial Pollution Exposure in Explaining Racial Disparities in Self-Rated Health.
abstract: This study provides an empirical test of two mechanisms (social capital and exposure to air pollution) that are theorized to mediate the effect of neighborhood on health and contribute to racial disparities in health outcomes. To this end, we utilize the Social Capital Benchmark Study, a national survey of individuals nested within communities in the United States, to estimate how multiple dimensions of social capital and exposure to air pollution, explain racial disparities in self-rated health. Our main findings show that when controlling for individual-confounders, and nesting within communities, our indicator of cognitive bridging, generalized trust, decreases the gap in self-rated health between African Americans and Whites by 84%, and the gap between Hispanics and Whites by 54%. Our other indicator of cognitive social capital, cognitive linking as represented by engagement in politics, decreases the gap in health between Hispanics and Whites by 32%, but has little impact on African Americans. We also assessed whether the gap in health was explained by respondents' estimated exposure to toxicity-weighted air pollutants from large industrial facilities over the previous year. Our results show that accounting for exposure to these toxins has no effect on the racial gap in self-rated health in these data. This paper contributes to the neighborhood effects literature by examining the impact that estimated annual industrial air pollution, and multiple measures of social capital, have on explaining the racial gap in health in a sample of individuals nested within communities across the United States.
authors: School of Environment and Natural Resources, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. ard.7@osu.edu.
authors: Kerry
authors: K
authors: Ard
authors: Department of Sociology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. colen.3@osu.edu.
authors: Cynthia
authors: C
authors: Colen
authors: School of Environment and Natural Resources, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. becerra.21@osu.edu.
authors: Marisol
authors: M
authors: Becerra
authors: School of Environment and Natural Resources, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. velez.71@osu.edu.
authors: Thelma
authors: T
authors: Velez
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D000393:Air Pollutants; D000397:Air Pollution; D004787:Environmental Pollution; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006630:Hispanic or Latino; D006801:Humans; D007221:Industry; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011057:Politics; D044469:Racial Groups; D012111:Residence Characteristics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D057566:Self Report; D066270:Social Capital; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D035502:Trust; D014481:United States; D044465:White People
chemical_list: D000393:Air Pollutants
keywords: health disparities; industrial air pollution; neighborhood effects; racial disparities; social capital