Not every neighborhood is near a toxic waste site. Not every block has a liquor store. These forms of neighborhood blight, as well as segregation and racial inequality, are all examples of .
While these forms of structural racism can be measured across an entire neighborhood, city or county, their impacts on people鈥檚 lives might be more localized. A found that people most affected by structural racism died more than two years sooner than the average American adult.
鈥淭hose measures of structural racism have really strong effects on life expectancy,鈥 said , professor and chair of sociology in the College of Letters and Science at 51吃瓜黑料 Davis. 鈥淚t鈥檚 real. It鈥檚 killing Americans early.鈥
Faris co-authored the study with colleagues at 51吃瓜黑料 Irvine, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rutgers University and Yale University.
Structural racism by block
Structural racism is partly the systematic location of people of color in neighborhoods that are profoundly disadvantaged. Segregation, which is the geographic separation of people by race, and racial inequality are also examples of structural racism.
In this study, measures of racial inequality included inequality in income, education, homeownership rates, employment rates, home pricing, mortgage denial rates and the concentration of Black residents at both the level of the neighborhood block and the county.
The researchers created a new measure of neighborhood blight, which includes local eviction rates, the presence of payday lenders, pawn shops and liquor stores and exposure to toxic waste.
This is believed to be the first study to compare the impacts of structural racism from block to block. The difference between two core parts of structural racism 鈥 racial inequality and neighborhood blight 鈥 might affect people at different scales.
鈥淪tructural racism that occurs more locally may affect an individual鈥檚 outcomes more directly than does structural racism measured over a broader geographic region,鈥 said Faris.
The study tests this idea with data from the 2010 U.S. Census, the 2008-2012 American Community Survey 5-year estimates and data on businesses, evictions, EPA data on toxic sites and mortgage data.
Life expectancy
The analysis showed that inequality and neighborhood blight at both the neighborhood and county levels shorten people鈥檚 lives. It also showed that life expectancy is even lower when mapping these combined measures across specific blocks in those neighborhoods.
Neighborhood blight had a stronger effect on life expectancy than inequality, and this effect was stronger in neighborhoods with more Black residents. Residents in a neighborhood with a makeup of 40% Black residents had a life expectancy 0.11 years shorter than people who lived in a neighborhood with no Black residents. In severely blighted neighborhoods, that gap tripled to 0.32 years.
Reducing the effect
Faris said it鈥檚 critical to understand structural racism even if addressing it in the real world can be incredibly complicated. Public policies that may reduce its harms include public health strategies, housing and education improvements and economic mobility.
Faris noted that these results include everyone in the neighborhood regardless of their race. The data in this analysis only include factors of structural racism and life expectancy for everyone living in these areas.
鈥淪tructural racism is a system of inequality that systematically benefits white people at the expense of others, but it could be that it actually adversely affects the white residents of these communities as well,鈥 said Faris.
This research was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health.