The Contingent Meaning of Neighborhood Stability for residents’ psychological well-being

By C. Ross, J. Reynolds, Karlyn J. Geis. American Sociological Review, 2000

496 citations recorded by the source corpus.

According to a cohesiveness perspective, neighborhood stability is good for communities and the individuals who live in them, and may be especially beneficial in poor neighborhoods. In contrast, a social isolation perspective proposes that neighborhood stability has negative effects on residents’ psychological well-being in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. This analysis of multilevel data—data in which survey information from a representative sample of Illinois residents is linked to census-tract information about poverty and stability in their neighborhood—supports a social isolation perspective. In affluent neighborhoods, stability is associated with low levels of distress; under conditions of poverty the opposite is true. In part this occurs because residents of poor, stable neighborhoods face high levels of disorder in their neighborhoods. Stability does not reduce perceived disorder under conditions of poverty, as it does in more affluent neighborhoods, which leaves residents feeling powerless to leave a dangerous place. Finally, the negative effects of poor, stable neighborhoods on residents’ psychological well-being do not stem from a lack of social ties among neighbors.

Subfields: Health, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9adc7a68a87709b74dc874ec715ec1921d6aa3d2

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Citations in the corpus

Are neighbourhood characteristics associated with depressive symptoms? A review of evidence (2008, background): “Other sets of interactions have also been examined in a small number of studies: knowing one’s neighbours was more strongly associated with higher levels of childhood anxiety and depression in poverty area neighbourhoods than in wealthy neighbourhoods;(39) parents’ use of inductive reasoning was a p”
How Long are Exposures to Poor Neighborhoods? The Long-Term Dynamics of Entry and Exit from Poor Neighborhoods (2003, methodology): “These contentions are supported by recent studies using survey-based measures of psychological well-being (Geis & Ross 1998; Ross, Reynolds & Geis 2000 ).”
The Dynamics of Unhealthy Housing in the UK: A Panel Data Analysis (2008, background): “The ability to move in order to escape from poor home and neighbourhood conditions has been linked to better health (Ross et al., 2000; Stokols & Shumaker, 1982) and linked with improved housing and neighbourhood conditions (especially safety) in the US (Katz et al.”
Neighborhood Disadvantage, Individual Economic Distress and Violence Against Women in Intimate Relationships (2003, background): “Rather, the effects of neighborhood stability on individual outcomes appear to be contingent on other neighborhood characteristics ( Ross et al., 2000; Warner and Pierce, 1993).”
Social Capital and Mental Distress in an Impoverished Community (2002, methodology): “Mental distress is measured using the Mirowsky and Ross psychological distress scale (Ross et al., 2000), which combines established”
Neighborhood disadvantage and mental health: The role of neighborhood disorder and social relationships (2010, background): “…neighborhood disorder was related to poor mental-health status and accounted for the distressing effects of neighborhood disadvantage on depression (Ross et al., 2000), indicating that the negative effect of a disadvantaged neighborhood on mental health was due to broken social control and order…”