Primary Submission Category: Mortality
The historical and contemporary role of housing in maintaining the Black-white mortality gap
Authors:Â Nick Graetz Sonya Porter Danielle Sandler Matthew Desmond
Presenting Author: Nick Graetz*
Despite a vast literature on structural racism in the housing market producing and maintaining socioeconomic advantage for White Americans, housing remains understudied in explanations of racial mortality gaps. We describe how housing relations, particularly tenure (renting/owning) and home valuation, are central to explaining contemporary and historical income gradients in all-cause mortality and longevity gaps between Black and White Americans. First, we link millions of records from the long-form Decennial Census (2000) and American Community Survey (2014-2018) with death records from the Social Security Administration to estimate period life expectancy in 2001 and 2015-2019 by race, tenure, income, and home values. We examine period life expectancy over the past two decades using standard life table methods. We show that most improvement in Black life expectancy is driven by gains for Black homeowners, though White owners still have the highest life expectancy by far across the income distribution. Life expectancy has improved much more slowly for renters, and in some cases declined. Second, we link individuals (ages 0-20) in the 1940 Census to redlining maps from the Homeowners’ Loan Corporation (1935-1940) and similar death records (1974-2022), estimating cohort life expectancies based on intergenerational housing trajectories (e.g., parent tenure, parent income, redlining grade). Last, we use a recently developed methodology for assessing the causal effects of the redlining maps that compares cross-boundary differences along boundaries to a comparison group of boundaries that had statistically similar pre-existing differences as the actual boundaries. Results from these analyses have not yet been disclosed by the Census Bureau. This study has important implications for health/housing policy, including the population health consequences of using private homeownership as the primary vehicle for American opportunity hoarding and wealth accumulation.