The influence of place-based characteristics on the health and well-being of children: Three papers

This dissertation is comprised of three papers on the relationship between area-level characteristics and child health. These papers explore the impact of area-level characteristics on children's parent-reported health status, self-reported feelings of safety, and self-reported "pre-sleep worry." The overarching goal is to contribute to the evidence regarding the effects of place on health by focusing on a relatively under-studied demographic group: children in late childhood and adolescence living in distressed urban areas.;I find that all three indicators of children's health analyzed in these studies are shaped by a range of contextual influences that go beyond family demographics and dynamics. Most importantly, I document the existence of "cross-level interactions" by which features of the social, spatial, or geopolitical environment moderate the health influence of families and other environments, over and above the independent effects they have on children's health. Family poverty appears to have a more deleterious effect on the reported health status of children living in suburbs than those in central cities. Unsupervised neighborhood exposure has a negative effect on children's feelings of safety in central cities, but not in suburbs. Neighborhood informal social control is positively associated with children's feelings of safety in suburbs, but not in cities, and stronger relationships with parents and teachers were more protective of youths' feelings of safety in less disorderly neighborhoods and schools. Finally, youth were more likely to report pre-sleep worry in the wake of traumatic events if they were attending schools in which they had been physically threatened. These findings suggest that multiple levels of geospatial organization have effects on health. They also suggest that health-related policies may have different effects on different types of families living in the same environment, and also have different effects on the same types of families living in different environments.