Measuring the spatial scale of structural racism and discrimination: Consequences for estimated life expectancy

Understanding the role of structural racism and discrimination is crucial for understanding persistent social disparities across many domains, but a key concern remains: how does it operate at different spatial scales, and does that affect how it should be measured? We explore both empirical and theoretical differences between structural racism measures at meso and macro scales in the United States. We construct two different measures of structural racism at the meso-level (that is, neighborhoods), one capturing absolute measures of neighborhood blight, the other relative indicators of Black-White inequality. We test four different scales of these meso-level measures, each defined by a buffer centered on a block with four different radii. We simultaneously measure relative racial inequality at the macro level (that is, the county).

We compared the relationship between structural racism measures on life expectancy at varying meso-scales. The structural racism measures include traditional indicators like residential segregation, as well as novel ones capturing neighborhood blight, such as eviction rates, housing vacancies, home loan denials, and proximity to toxic waste, fringe banks, liquor stores, and bars. We estimate multilevel linear models in which the outcome measure was the average life expectancy at the meso-level.

We found consistent evidence that neighborhood- and county-level structural racism are associated with lower average life expectancy in neighborhoods. For our combined neighborhood structural racism measure (Black/White inequality and neighborhood blight), we detected a nonlinear relationship in which life expectancy is even more sharply lower for higher concentrations of multidimensional structural racism. The novel neighborhood blight measure had stronger relationships with life expectancy than did Black/White inequality, and they were stronger in high concentration Black neighborhoods.

Understanding how structural racism operates at different spatial scales is important for exploring its mechanisms and informing targeted multilevel interventions to address health disparities.