Poverty, Social Capital, and Health in NYC.

This paper examines the role of social capital in explaining neighborhood variation in health. Holding poverty, race, ethnicity, population turnover, and other variables constant, this ecological study assesses the impact of several local social capital indicators on eighteen health outcomes in New York City. We find that nonprofit organizational density in a neighborhood reduces rates of mortality, self-reported health status, and nine specific conditions. The violent crime rate, which has been shown to be related to collective efficacy, is strongly related to self-reported health and a few other conditions (asthma, heart failure, AIDS). Linguistic isolation, which is imperfectly related to the size of the Latino population, is associated with less mortality and illness, as the "Latino paradox" would predict. However, linguistically isolated neighborhoods have higher rates of disability and tuberculosis, as might be expected among new immigrants. These social capital indicators do not appear to mediate the associations between poverty, race, and ethnicity and health. Other pathways may account for social disparities in health across New York neighborhoods. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]