Sprawl and Health

Hirdes 1992 - "The importance of social relationships, socioeconomic status and health practices with respect to mortality among healthy Ontario males"

Hirdes, Forbes
"The importance of social relationships, socioeconomic status and health practices with respect to mortality among healthy Ontario males"
Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
February 1992; v45, n2; pp 175-182
On the Web
Relevance: Medium

The authors examined 2000 men in Ontario and found that social relationships had "a strong association with mortality." Unfortunately, their social relationships index was comprised of marital status, number of children, family contact, and participation in voluntary associations -- only the last of these is conceivably affected by sprawl. Also, the strong association of social capital to mortality is in the comparison between the highest scoring 10% in social capital and the lowest scoring 10%. It's not clear whether sprawl is affect social capital in these extremes or in the middle 80% (where, in turn, the effects on mortality are less pronounced).

Interestingly, the effect of income was greater than the effect of social capital (adjusted relative risk of 0.41 versus 0.30). The effect of income is even greater because the risk factors for income include the top 20% versus the bottom 20% (not just top and bottom deciles, as for social capital).

Veenstra 2002 - "Social capital and health (plus wealth, income inequality, and regional health governance)"

Veenstra
"Social capital and health (plus wealth, income inequality and regional health governance)"
Social Science and Medicine
March 2002; v54, n6; pp 849-868
On the Web
Relevance: Medium-high

Describes a study of 30 health districts in Saskatchewan, comparing population health with social capital, income inequality, wealth, and governance. Social capital meant associational and civic participation. Two findings stand out:

• The author found no evidence of a relationship between social capital and good governance in the health districts.
• Low social capital was correlated to high mortality; high income inequality was also correlated to high mortality. The author writes, "the two may be co-mingled somehow when it comes to population health, although they were not significantly related to one another."

Veenstra's findings are promising because his use of social capital--associational and civic participation--is the same kind that may be affected by sprawl. And while the effects of social capital on mortality are "co-mingled" with income inequality, there is a relationship.

McCann 2003 - "Measuring the Health Effects of Sprawl"

McCann, Barbara; Ewing, Reid
"Measuring the Health Effects of Sprawl: A National Analysis of Physical Activity, Obesity, and Chronic Disease."
Smart Growth America and Surface Transportation Policy Project
September 2003
On the Web
Relevance: high

This report is based on Ewing et al's earlier article (2003) and is longer with more details and sidebars. The conclusions, of course, are the same, but the report includes sprawl scores for all 448 counties and the web page has fact sheets for counties in most states.