This article reveals race differentials in obesity as both an individual-and neighborhood-level phenomena. Using neighborhood-level data from the 1990-1994 National Health Interview Survey, we find that neighborhoods characterized by high proportions of black residents have a greater prevalence of obesity than areas in which the majority of the residents are white. Using individual-level data, we also find that residents of neighborhoods in which at least one-quarter of the residents are black face a 13 percent increase in the odds of being obese compared to residents of other communities. The association between neighborhood racial composition and obesity is completely attenuated after including statistical controls for the poverty rate and obesity prevalence of respondents' neighborhoods. These findings support the underlying assumptions of both institutional and social models of neighborhood effects.The causes of obesity, including the social relationships that mediate and moderate the relationship between various risk factors and obesity, are complex (Weinsier et al. 1998;Whitaker 2002;Bloomgarden 2002). As research consistently demonstrates that behaviors affecting health are rooted within individuals' social environments (Berkman and Kawachi 2000), it is critical to broaden the scope of inquiry such that health is understood not only as a function of individual traits, but also as related to the environments in which people live (MacIntyre and Ellaway 2003;Robert 1999). These environments include physical space as well as community attitudes and behaviors that characterize these places (Frolich, Corin, and Potvin 2001). Although literature linking residential context to health has increased sharply in recent years (see Kawachi and Berkman 2003 for an overview), little work has examined obesity as an outcome. This article contributes to the growing body of work focusing on the ecological correlates of health and makes a timely contribution to the recent focus on obesity in both academic and popular settings.It is important to fully understand obesity because obesity prevalence among U.S. adults has increased to epidemic levels; has contributed to an increased risk of disease, disability, and death; and has led to an escalation in health care costs (Allison, Zannolli, and Narayan 1999; Wang et al. 2002). Over the last 25 years, the prevalence of adult obesity has more than doubled; in 1976 only 15 percent of the adult population was obese, but by 2000 adult obesity rates surpassed 30 percent (NCHS 2003). This increase is particularly problematic because obesity is associated with an increased risk of serious health problems including type-2 diabetes, gallbladder disease, high blood pressure, and heart disease (Flegal et al. 2002;Calle et al. 2003;Kaplan 2000;Must et al. 1999). More importantly, obesity increases the risk of a number of causes of death and is believed to contribute to approximately 14 and Fontaine et al. 1999;McGinnis and Foege 1993;Rogers, Hummer, and Krueger 2003;Sturm 2002). NI...

Few studies have examined whether sex differences in mortality are associated with different distributions of risk factors or result from the unique relationships between risk factors and mortality for men and women. We extend previous research by systematically testing a variety offactors, including health behaviors, social ties, socioeconomic status, and biological indicators of health. We employ the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey III Linked Mortality File and use Cox proportional hazards models to examine sex diferences in adult mortality in the United States. Our findings document that social and behavioral characteristics are key factors related to the sex gap in mortality. Once we controlfor women's lower levels of marriage, poverty, and exercise, the sex gap in mortality widens; and once we control for women 's greater propensity to visit with friends and relatives, attend religious services, and abstain from smoking, the sex gap in mortality narrows. Biological factors-including indicators of inflammation and cardiovascular risk-also inform sex differences in mortality. Nevertheless, persistent sex differences in mortality remain: compared with women, men have 30% to 83% higher risks of death over the follow-up period, depending on the covariates included in the model. Although the prevalence of risk factors difers by sex, the impact of those risk factors on mortality is similar for men and women.

Existing research that studies individual health behaviors and conceive of behaviors as simplistically reflecting narrow intentions toward health may obscure the social organization of health behaviors. Instead, we examine how eight health behaviors group together to form distinct health behavior niches. Using nationally-representative data from U.S. adults aged 18 and over from the 2004–2009 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), we use Latent Class Analysis to identify classes of behavior based on smoking status, alcohol use, physical activity, physician visits, and flu vaccination. We identify 7 distinct health behavior classes including concordant health promoting (44%), concordant health compromising (26%), and discordant classes (30%). We find significant race/ethnic, sex, regional, and age differences in class membership. We show that health behavior classes are associated with prospective mortality, suggesting that they are valid representations of health lifestyles. We discuss the implications of our results for sociological theories of health behaviors, as well as for multiple behavior interventions seeking to improve population health.

Population growth in rural areas characterized by high levels of natural amenities has recently received substantial research attention. A noted concern with amenity-driven rural population growth is its potential to raise local costs-of-living while yielding only low-wage service sector employment for long-term residents. The work presented here empirically models long-term rural residents' economic well-being, making use of longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. In general, the results suggest that long-term rural families residing in high-growth amenity and recreation areas tend to have higher annual incomes than do their counterparts in non-growth amenity/recreation areas, regardless of the sex, race, or age of the family head. However, higher costs-of-living in these areas supplant any relative gains in income. As such, these analyses provide empirical evidence of patterns inferred by earlier anecdotal evidence and case studies.

This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine the extent to which school-level social and institutional factors moderate genetic tendencies to smoke cigarettes. Our analysis relies on a sub-sample of 1,198 sibling and twin pairs nested within 84 schools. We develop a multilevel modeling extension of regression-based quantitative genetic techniques to calculate school-specific heritability estimates. We show that smoking onset (h 2 = .51) and daily smoking (h 2 = .58) are both genetically influenced. Whereas the genetic influence on smoking onset is consistent across schools, we show that schools moderate the heritability of daily smoking. The heritability of daily smoking is the highest within schools in which the most popular students are also smokers and reduced within schools in which the majority of the students are nonHispanic and white. These findings make important contributions to the literature on geneenvironment interactions.