Samantha Friedman
Associate Professor of Sociology, University at Albany
Background: Previous research has shown that racial disparities in later-life mortality are influenced by events in early life and over the life course. Absent from this research is a study of early-life structural racism on later-life racial disparities in mortality. Most studies rely on early-life characteristics and interpersonal experiences that are retrospectively reported by respondents. This research seeks to fill this gap by adopting a life-course approach that will quantify the impact of early-life structural racism, as measured by institutional redlining, on all-cause mortality in later life among White and Black older adults. It will use digitized historical redlining maps from the 1930s utilized by the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), restricted-access Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) data that links respondents to their records in the 1940 decennial census, and HRS public-use data. The racist policy of redlining was born out of the HOLC color-coded appraisal system and remained legal until the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act.
Aim 1: To link the HRS-1940 data at the ED level to the redlining data from the digitized HOLC maps. Mapping the HOLC information onto the EDs is an arduous process because a complete set of ED shapefiles is not readily available. Once ED shapefiles are created, we will overlay the HOLC maps and create a redlining score for each neighborhood. Then, we will link these data to the HRS public use data and code the project variables.
Aim 2: Using the harmonized dataset, we will estimate a hazard model of all-cause mortality as a function of early-life-neighborhood redlined status, control variables, and mediating variables for the full sample and by race to address the following research questions: a) Does residence in a redlined neighborhood in early life contribute directly to mortality in later life, controlling for other factors? b) Is the impact of residence in a redlined neighborhood in early life on mortality in later life mediated by mid-to-late life income, wealth, and education? and c) Does the impact of redlining in early life differ by race?