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Global urbanization has sparked substantial environmental, public health, and social science research on the importance of conserving and propagating natural environments. A large subset of this work focuses on the benefits of green space for health. An often-overlooked methodological concern when examining relations between green space and health, however, involves residential self-selection. The selective movement of individuals into greener neighborhoods on the basis of preexisting health and correlated social factors may bias associations, particularly in cross-sectional studies, which predominate existing green space/health research. To quantify the extent of residential self-selection bias, this study used a longitudinal sibling comparison design with repeated individual and neighborhood measures to estimate associations between pre-move health factors, including maternal body mass index (BMI) and infant birthweight, and post-move neighborhood green space in a residentially mobile sample of mothers in California, 2007 to 2015 (n = 288,333). Results show that better health before moving predicted higher levels of neighborhood green space after moving, providing evidence of health selection. Findings also indicate some support for differential health selection into neighborhood green space by race/ethnicity, including that evidence of selection emerges for white and Hispanic, but not Black, mothers. However, weak relations between pre-move individual factors and post-move neighborhood green space across analyses suggest that potential bias due to residential self-selection appears relatively minimal in a large, diverse, and highly mobile sample of families in California. Findings support calls to increase green space in historically marginalized neighborhoods as a means to promote environmental and health equity. • Greenspace-health research relies on cross-sectional designs susceptible to bias. • Study examines role of pre-move health on post-move greenspace among mothers. • Finds evidence of health selection into greenspace, stronger for White mothers. • Weak associations indicate minimal bias due to health selection in study population. • Suggest contextual and selection effects involved in greenspace-health associations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial research documents health consequences of neighborhood disadvantage. Patterns of residential mobility that differ by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) may sort non-Hispanic (NH) Black and low-SES families into disadvantaged neighborhoods. In this study, we leverage a sibling-linked dataset to track residential mobility among birthing persons between pregnancies and investigate baseline characteristics associated with downward mobility, including race/ethnicity, SES, and pre-existing health conditions. We used a probabilistic linkage strategy to identify births to the same person between 2007 and 2015 (n = 624,222) and categorized downward residential mobility by quartile-level increases in neighborhood disadvantage. We defined strong downward mobility as a move from a neighborhood with very low (quartile 1) to very high (quartile 4) disadvantage and estimated the logit (i.e., log-odds) of strong downward mobility as a function of racial/ethnic, sociodemographic, and health characteristics of the birthing person and their first birth. We further explored the role of neighborhood housing affordability by examining changes in affordability from first to second birth by race/ethnicity. NH Black birthing persons show an over three-fold increased odds of strong downward mobility relative to NH white birthing persons (OR = 3.34, CI: 2.91, 3.84). To a lesser extent, Hispanic race/ethnicity, WIC receipt, low educational attainment, obesity, and infant preterm birth (PTB) also predict strong downward mobility. Examination of changes in neighborhood affordability indicate that over half of NH Black birthing persons move to a more affordable neighborhood, compared to less than a quarter of NH white birthing persons, before the birth of their second child. Results remain consistent across outcomes, measures of neighborhood SES, and modified log-Poisson models. We find an elevated risk of strong downward mobility among NH Black and low-SES birthing persons. Future research may identify other factors (e.g., housing affordability) that generate downward residential mobility to identify interventions that promote neighborhood equity. • Longitudinal study of residential mobility among more than 600,000 birthing persons. • Black birthing persons show an elevated risk of downward mobility between births. • Neighborhood affordability may generate different racial-ethnic mobility patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]