Effects of the Built Environment on Childhood Obesity: The Case of Urban Recreational Trails and Crime

Sandy, Robert; Tchernis, Rusty; Wilson, Jeffrey S.; Liu, Gilbert; Zhou, Xilin

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1850833

Cited by 10 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…One approach to partial out these different sources of change is to split the sample into subsamples of individuals who 'never moved ward' over the entire period (present in the same ward at each wave) and those who 'moved ward at least once' (who, between two waves, were found in different wards) (e.g. Sandy et al, 2013). While allowing us to study the independent effect of changing diversity for individuals who stayed, this method cannot isolate independent effects of changes that arise from a move between communities, as 72% of individuals who 'moved ward at least once' also experienced 'staying' between other waves.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Ethnic Diversity Have a Negative Effect on Attitudes towards the Community? A Longitudinal Analysis of the Causal Claims within the Ethnic Diversity and Social Cohesion Debate

Laurence

Bentley

2015

Eur Sociol Rev

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Studies demonstrate a negative association between community ethnic diversity and indicators of social cohesion (especially attitudes towards neighbours and the community), suggesting diversity causes a decline in social cohesion. However, to date, the evidence for this claim is based solely on cross-sectional research. This article performs the first longitudinal test of the impact of diversity, applying fixed-effects modelling methods to three waves of panel data from the British Household Panel Survey, spanning a period of 18 years. Using an indicator of affective attachment, the findings suggest that changes in community diversity do lead to changes in attitudes towards the community. However, this effect differs by whether the change in diversity stems from a community increasing in diversity around individuals who do not move (stayers) or individuals moving into more or less diverse communities (movers). Increasing diversity undermines attitudes among stayers. Individuals who move from a diverse to a homogeneous community report improved attitudes. However, there is no effect among individuals who move from a homogeneous to a diverse community. This article provides strong evidence that the effect of community diversity is likely causal, but that prior preferences for/against out-group neighbours may condition diversity's impact. It also demonstrates that multiple causal processes are in operation at the individual-level, occurring among both stayers and movers, which collectively contribute to the emergence of average cross-sectional differences in attitudes between communities. Unique insights into the causal impact of community disadvantage also emerge.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Ethnic Diversity Have a Negative Effect on Attitudes towards the Community? A Longitudinal Analysis of the Causal Claims within the Ethnic Diversity and Social Cohesion Debate

Laurence

Bentley

2015

Eur Sociol Rev

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“…They find that the arrival of amenities are unrelated to children's BMI, but physical facilities, such as fitness areas and volleyball courts, lead to statistically significant weight reduction among eight-year old boys. In a closely related paper, Sandy et al (2010) find that the presence of a trail nearby reduces children's weight, but the nearby violent crime rate may undermine the trail effect. They attribute the credibility of the trail effect to two facts: 1) the location of trails is likely to be exogenous due to the fact that trails follow river banks and abandoned railways; and 2) trails were unlikely to be factored into the house location choice among families as there was very limited time between their announcement and construction.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 97%

Do Neighborhood Parks and Playgrounds Reduce Childhood Obesity?

Fan

Jin

2013

American J Agri Economics

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Promoting physical activity in children is an important front battling Childhood obesity. This paper investigates if and by how much neighborhood parks and playgrounds, one of the most important activity-enhancing neighborhood facilities, affect childhood obesity. We employ a covariate matching technique to analyze the 2007 National Survey of Children Health data. We find that neighborhood parks and playgrounds make children more fit. The reduction in body mass index (BMI) as well as the overweight or obesity risk is both statistically and economically significant. We also find that the park impact depends on gender, age, race, income, neighborhood safety, and other neighborhood amenities. The results suggest that a provision of neighborhood parks and playgrounds is likely to make children more fit, but relevant interventions need to take socioeconomic status of the targeted children population as well as other neighborhood amenities into consideration.

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“…Obesity is a characteristic with a complex set of socio-economic, demographic, environmental and cultural determinants (Ulijaszek, 2007). A wide array of these factors has been examined in the literature, including access to food, lifestyle factors, fast-food consumption (Chou et al, 2004), economic well-being and security (Smith et al, 2009), food advertising (Andryeva et al, 2011), physical activity and the built environment (Salois, 2012, Sandy et al, 2012. The influence of these factors arises through their effect on the two most proximate determinants of body weight -food choice and the resultant nutrient and energy composition of diets and energy expenditure.…”

Section: [Table-1 Here]mentioning

confidence: 99%

Can adherence to dietary guidelines address excess caloric intake? An empirical assessment for the UK

Srinivasan

2013

Economics & Human Biology

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The facilitation of healthier dietary choices by consumers is a key element of government strategies to combat the rising incidence of obesity in developed and developing countries. Public health campaigns to promote healthier eating often target compliance with recommended dietary guidelines for consumption of individual nutrients such as fats and added sugars. This paper examines the association between improved compliance with dietary guidelines for individual nutrients and excess calorie intake, the most proximate determinant of obesity risk. We apply quantile regressions and counterfactual decompositions to cross-sectional data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey (2000-01) to assess how excess calorie consumption patterns in the UK are likely to change with improved compliance with dietary guidelines. We find that the effects of compliance vary significantly across different quantiles of calorie consumption. Our results show that compliance with dietary guidelines for individual nutrients, even if successfully achieved, is likely to be associated with only modest shifts in excess calorie consumption patterns. Consequently, public health campaigns that target compliance with dietary guidelines for specific nutrients in isolation are unlikely to have a significant effect on the obesity risk faced by the population.

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Effects of the Built Environment on Childhood Obesity: The Case of Urban Recreational Trails and Crime

Cited by 10 publications

References 39 publications

Does Ethnic Diversity Have a Negative Effect on Attitudes towards the Community? A Longitudinal Analysis of the Causal Claims within the Ethnic Diversity and Social Cohesion Debate

Does Ethnic Diversity Have a Negative Effect on Attitudes towards the Community? A Longitudinal Analysis of the Causal Claims within the Ethnic Diversity and Social Cohesion Debate

Do Neighborhood Parks and Playgrounds Reduce Childhood Obesity?

Can adherence to dietary guidelines address excess caloric intake? An empirical assessment for the UK

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