Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia, 6303 NW Marine Drive, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Soc Sci Med. 2009 Aug;69(3):420-32. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.05.028. Epub 2009 Jun 18.
A number of studies demonstrates a relationship between neighbourhood concentration of affluence and disadvantage and the health and development of its residents. We contribute to this literature by testing hypotheses about the relationship between neighbourhood-level concentrated affluence/disadvantage and child-level developmental outcomes in a study population of 37,798 Kindergarten children residing in 433 neighbourhoods throughout the province of British Columbia, Canada. We utilise a previously-validated measure of neighbourhood socioeconomic composition--the Index of Concentration at the Extremes (ICE)--which not only allows for more precise estimation of the competing influences of concentrated affluence and disadvantage, but also facilitates examination of the potential impact of neighbourhood-level income inequality. Our findings show that increases in neighbourhood affluence are associated with increases in children's scores on the Early Development Instrument (EDI), a holistic measure of Kindergarteners' readiness for school. Particularly noteworthy is that, for four of the five EDI scales (physical, social, emotional, and communication) and the total score, results indicate a significant curvilinear relationship--whereby the highest average child-level outcomes are not found in locations with the highest concentrations of affluence, but rather in locations with relatively equal proportions of affluent and disadvantaged families. This finding suggests, first, that concentrated affluence may have diminishing rates of return on contributing to enhanced child development, and, second, that children residing in mixed-income neighbourhoods may benefit both from the presence of affluent residents and from the presence of services and institutions aimed at assisting lower-income residents. Implications and future directions are discussed.
许多研究表明，社区的贫富集中程度与其居民的健康和发展之间存在一定关系。本研究利用加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省 37798 名幼儿园儿童在 433 个社区的数据，通过检验社区贫富集中程度与儿童发展结果之间的关系假设，为这一文献做出了贡献。本研究使用了一种经过验证的社区社会经济构成衡量指标——极端集中指数（ICE），该指标不仅可以更精确地估计贫富集中的竞争影响，还可以检验社区收入不平等的潜在影响。研究结果表明，社区富裕程度的提高与儿童在早期发展工具（EDI）上的得分增加有关，该工具是对幼儿园儿童入学准备情况的综合衡量。特别值得注意的是，对于 EDI 的五个量表中的四个（身体、社会、情感和沟通）和总分，结果表明存在显著的曲线关系——在富裕程度最高的地方，儿童的平均水平并不是最高的，而是在富裕家庭和贫困家庭比例相对均衡的地方。这一发现表明，首先，集中的富裕程度可能对促进儿童发展的回报递减，其次，居住在混合收入社区的儿童可能既受益于富裕居民的存在，也受益于旨在帮助低收入居民的服务和机构的存在。讨论了研究的意义和未来方向。
