Primary Submission Category: Health equity
The Effects of Residential and School Segregation in Childhood on Midlife Physical, Mental, and Cognitive Well-Being
Authors: Hyeran Chung John Warren Eric Grodsky Jennifer Manly Adam Brickman Chandra Muller
Presenting Author: Rafael Achío*
Children in the United States live in racially/ethnically segregated neighborhoods and attend racially/ethnically segregated schools. In our analysis, we build on theories about early life stress and the impact of segregation on stress processes, both in residential and school contexts. We specifically ask: Can racial/ethnic disparities in later-life physical, mental, and cognitive health outcomes be attributed, in part, to early life patterns of segregation? To address this question, we use data from the High School and Beyond cohort—a large (n=~25,500), diverse, nationally representative sample followed from high school in 1980 through age ~60 in 2021/2022. County-level residential segregation in childhood is expressed using an entropy index; school segregation is expressed using a disproportionality index which compares each school’s racial/ethnic composition to the racial/ethnic distribution of enrolled high school students in that school’s county. Our outcomes include indicators of physical, mental, and cognitive well-being at age ~60 that are known to be impacted by stress: These include hypertension, psychological distress, and memory complaints. Our analyses are attentive to heterogeneity in effects across racial/ethnic groups since the same pattern of segregation (e.g., living in a highly segregated county and attending a disproportionately white school) may harm some students (e.g., Black or Latine students) more than others (e.g., White students). Preliminary results suggest that residential and school segregation impact these stress-related outcomes in hypothesized ways, even net of other student- and school-level covariates.