Neighborhood effects on health among migrants and natives in Shanghai, China

Abstract

This article compares health status between internal migrants and urban natives in Shanghai, China and examines neighborhood effects on self-rated health, chronic conditions, and psychological well-being. Migrants on average exhibit better health than natives in Shanghai. Neighborhood satisfaction, social cohesion and safety show strong association with health after controlling for individual factors. However, these associations tend to be weaker for migrants than for natives in Shanghai. Income, perceived stress, and neighborhood social cohesion jointly explain about 26% of the link between neighborhood satisfaction and an index of overall well-being. Among individual-level SES indicators, income is more strongly linked to self-rated health than education and occupation. Relative to SES indicators, perceived loneliness and stress are more directly associated with health. Study limitations and future research direction are discussed in the end. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.