Neighborhood Disadvantage and Self-Assessed Health, Disability, and Depressive Symptoms: Longitudinal Results From the Health and Retirement Study

PurposeBy using a longitudinal cohort, we assessed the association between neighborhood disadvantage and incidence of poor health and function in three domains.MethodsMore than 4,000 enrollees aged 55 to 65 years in the national Health and Retirement Study were assessed biennially from 1998 through 2006 for incidence of fair/poor self-rated health, elevated depressive symptoms, and limitations in six basic activities of daily living (disability). Each analysis was restricted to subjects without that condition in 1994 or 1996. Neighborhoods (census tracts, time-updated for moves), were considered disadvantaged if they fell below the 25th percentile in an index comprising six socioeconomic status indicators. Repeated measures logistic regressions, inverse probability weighted to account for individual confounders, selective survival, and loss to follow-up were used to estimate odds ratios (ORs) for incidence of each outcome in the wave after exposure to disadvantaged neighborhood.ResultsAfter covariate adjustment, neighborhood disadvantage predicted onset of fair/poor SRH (OR, 1.36; 95% confidence interval, 1.15−1.59) but not disability (OR, 0.97; 0.81−1.16) or elevated depressive symptoms (OR, 0.97; 0.81−1.16).ConclusionsResults confirmed previous findings that neighborhood disadvantage predicts self-rated health in a longitudinal context but did not support an association between neighborhood disadvantage and onset of disability or elevated depressive symptoms.