Toxic Neighborhoods: The Effects of Concentrated Poverty and Environmental Lead Contamination on Early Childhood Development

Abstract

Although socioeconomic disparities in cognitive ability emerge early in the life course, most research on the consequences of living in a disadvantaged neighborhood has focused on school-age children or adolescents. In this study, we outline and test a theoretical model of neighborhood effects on cognitive development during early childhood that highlights the mediating role of exposure to neurotoxic lead. To evaluate this model, we follow 1,266 children in Chicago from birth through school entry and track both their areal risk of lead exposure and their neighborhoods' socioeconomic composition over time. With these data, we estimate the joint effects of neighborhood poverty and environmental lead contamination on receptive vocabulary ability. We find that sustained exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods reduces vocabulary skills during early childhood and that this effect operates through a causal mechanism involving lead contamination.

Concentrated poverty, ambient air pollution, and child cognitive development

“…This study has important implications for interdisciplinary research on concentrated poverty in sociology, developmental psychology, and economics. Although most prior research about the effects of concentrated poverty focuses on older children and posits mechanisms involving differences in socialization or institutional resources, we provide evidence that the etiology of neighborhood effects lies earlier during the course of development and is rooted in environmental inequalities ( 19 ). Our findings demonstrate how concentrated poverty is a “linked ecology of social maladies” ( 1 ), consisting not merely of material deprivation but also a morass of environmental health hazards, that may lead to neurological injury and impede the early stages of human development.…”

“…Integrating research from the social sciences, neurology, and environmental epidemiology, we hypothesize that differences in early life exposure to contextual health hazards, and neurotoxic air pollution in particular, may help to explain the effects of neighborhood poverty on cognitive development ( 19 ). Because major roadways and other noxious infrastructure are more likely to be located in, near, or upwind of poor neighborhoods ( 20 , 21 ), their residents are disproportionately exposed to air pollutants ( 22 , 23 ), many of which harm the central nervous system.…”

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

“…Nascent work on environmental racism has encouraged sociologists to consider a broader range of mechanisms involved in neighborhood effects (Wodtke et al 2022). Such novel work may be especially appropriate given the relative rarity of other traditionally studied adverse urban outcomes, such as homicide.…”

Environmental inequality and disparities in school readiness: The role of neurotoxic lead

“…First, exposure to lead, even at very low levels, significantly impairs children's cognitive development, especially when it occurs during early childhood (Aizer et al, 2018; Lanphear et al, 2005). Second, owing to the strong and persistent link between neighborhood segregation and lead contamination, Black, Hispanic, and low‐income children are at substantially greater risk of subclinical lead poisoning than are White and more affluent children (Egan et al, 2021; Teye et al, 2021; Wodtke et al, 2022). We therefore hypothesized that differences in exposure to lead‐contaminated environments during early childhood can explain, at least in part, class and racial disparities in school readiness.…”