Table 1.
Operational Definitions and Distribution of Residential Environment Variables, New York City, 2007–2009
| Residential Environment Variable | Overall, mean (SD) | Quintilea | P Value | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1, mean (SD) | 5, mean (SD) | |||
| Socioeconomic environmentb | ||||
| Total population, no. | 48,752 (25,414) | 56,461 (22,851) | 39,038 (23,415) | <0.001 |
| White population, % | 47.4 (28.0) | 18.7 (14.0) | 74.4 (13.2) | <0.001 |
| Black or African-American population, % | 25.5 (28.1) | 52.1 (27.0) | 5.4 (5.8) | <0.001 |
| Hispanic or Latino population, % | 24.4 (19.9) | 35.6 (24.4) | 12.7 (7.2) | <0.001 |
| Population with income below 100% of the federal poverty line, % | 19.4 (11.3) | 29.6 (11.0) | 11.0 (5.6) | <0.001 |
| Median household income | 41,491 (16,098) | 28,765 (10,775) | 56,572 (14,635) | <0.001 |
| Linguistically isolated, % | 13.3 (9.4) | 14.1 (9.3) | 9.1 (6.8) | 0.01 |
| College graduate, % | 32.6 (17.7) | 18.8 (6.2) | 52.4 (18.4) | <0.001 |
| High school graduate, % | 24.9 (7.8) | 26.8 (4.0) | 18.9 (10.5) | <0.001 |
| Less than high school graduate, % | 26.8 (13.0) | 37.7 (10.3) | 14.4 (8.2) | <0.001 |
| Median number of homicides | 0.9 (1.2) | 2.0 (1.4) | 0.3 (0.4) | <0.001 |
| Food environmentc | ||||
| BMI-healthy food outlets | 10.6 (7.7) | 9.5 (6.6) | 13.1 (8.6) | 0.02 |
| BMI-neutral food outlets | 100.7 (57.3) | 107.5 (52.1) | 186.8 (135.3) | <0.001 |
| BMI-unhealthy food outlets | 120.5 (97.6) | 81.6 (39.0) | 97.5 (55.3) | 0.28 |
| Built environmentd | ||||
| Land-use mix index | 0.5 (0.2) | 0.4 (0.2) | 0.6 (0.3) | <0.001 |
| Residential area that is covered by all parks, % | 10.2 (11.6) | 10.3 (10.8) | 9.9 (15.0) | 0.97 |
| Open space and outdoor recreational areas, % | 11.1 (13.3) | 9.0 (10.3) | 11.0 (15.9) | 0.26 |
| Residential environment factor score | ||||
| 1e | 0.0 (1.0) | −0.5 (1.0) | 0.8 (0.7) | <0.001 |
| 2f | 0.0 (1.0) | −1.0 (1.0) | 0.6 (0.3) | <0.001 |
| 3g | 0.0 (1.0) | −0.3 (0.9) | 0.6 (1.1) | <0.001 |
| Residential environment composite scoreh | 0.0 (1.0) | −1.1 (0.4) | 1.2 (0.8) | <0.001 |
Abbreviations: BMI, body mass index; SD, standard deviation.
a The first quintile represents the least advantaged residential environment; the fifth quintile represents the most advantaged residential environment.
b Social environment variables were constructed at the zip-code level using US Census data from the year 2000. All 2000 US Census variables were calculated using variables of sample data from summary file 3 (34). Homicide variables were mined from the New York Times (51).
c Food environment measures were derived from 2005 data purchased from Dun & Bradstreet, a commercial vendor of business data. Dun & Bradstreet maintains a comprehensive database of microdata on over 11 million US business locations, which include business name, geocoded location, and detailed Standard Industrial Classification industry codes for food establishments (52). Food outlets for BMI-healthy, BMI-neutral, and BMI-unhealthy were measured using point-in polygons counts.
d Built environment variables constructed for the present study included a measure of residential and commercial land use mix using the Primary Land Use Tax Lot Output data (35), the percentage of open space and outdoor recreational area available from the Department of City Planning, and the percentage of park and green space area available from NYC Department of Parks and Recreation park boundary shapefile data (53).
e Residential environment factor score 1 is a summary score extracted from principal component analysis of the variables low proportion of Hispanic population, poverty, linguistically isolated, less than high school education, ratio of counts of BMI-unhealthy food to BMI-healthy and BMI-neutral food outlets, high proportion of neighborhood income, and college education. This score explained 47.9% of the variation of the original neighborhood variables.
f Residential environment factor score 2 is a summary score extracted from principal component analysis of the variables low proportion of black population, homicide crime; and high proportion of white population. This score explained 22.9% of the variation of the original neighborhood variables.
g Residential environment factor score 3 is a summary score extracted from principal component analysis of the variables ratio of BMI-healthy food to BMI-neutral and BMI-unhealthy food outlets, ratio of BMI-neutral food to BMI-healthy and BMI-unhealthy food outlets and neighborhood walkability. This score explained 11.0% of the variation of the original neighborhood variables.
h A residential socioeconomic, food and built environment composite score was created by combining the 3 components identified by principal component analysis and then divided into quintiles. This score explain a substantial amount of the variation (81.8%) of the original neighborhood variables.