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Neighborhood Poverty Histories and Health across the Life Course
Research on the health effects of neighborhood poverty has relied primarily on cross-sectional data on neighborhoods. But neighborhoods change over time and residents’ health may be shaped through long-term processes of change such as the concentration of poverty. I show how traditionally used cross-sectional measures of neighborhood poverty may obscure the relationship between neighborhoods and health across the life-course. Using multiple decades of census tract poverty data and a survey of mothers and their young children in California, I show how long-term neighborhood poverty trajectories are associated with obesity among the mothers and inadequate sleep among the children. These results suggest future research on neighborhood determents of health across the life-course should utilize measures that capture the dynamics of neighborhood change.