Neighborhood Racial and Economic Composition Predicts Incidence of Various Emergency Service Responses

Abstract

Sociological research has investigated neighborhood inequality across various consequential events. Crime and violence continue to be dominant phenomena examined. Less sociological attention has been given to other types of adverse incidents involving emergency services responses. In this article, the author draws on a unique data set on medical emergencies, fires, traffic collisions, gas leaks, carbon monoxide leaks, and hazardous incidents from more than 600 local first-responder agencies across the United States to examine neighborhood inequalities in prevalence. The author finds that across nearly all outcomes, neighborhood proportion Black is a dominant predictor of incidence that persists net of a battery of controls. The author additionally finds socioeconomic disparities across a few of these outcomes, including medical emergencies, fires, and traffic collisions. The author concludes by broadly encouraging more sociological research on these understudied events.

Racial Segregation in Everyday Mobility Patterns: Disentangling the Effect of Travel Time

“…The composition of neighborhood mobility patterns is a critical predictor of neighborhood outcomes such as violence, homicide, fatal police violence, infectious disease, and birth weight (Graif et al 2017; Levy et al 2020, 2022; Vachuska 2023; Vachuska and Levy 2022a, 2022b). The main driver of these outcomes is the socioeconomic status of visitor flows to a neighborhood, which, while distinct, is strongly correlated with race (Levy et al 2020).…”