Black-White Disparities in Pediatric Asthma in Metropolitan Areas, 2015: Assessing the Roles of Residential Inequality and Segregation

Little research has explored how black-white residential inequality and residential segregation are associated and moderate black-white disparities in pediatric asthma. This paper contributes to this limited literature by using data for children in the 2015 American Housing Survey Metropolitan samples. Controlling for black-white inequalities in residential characteristics, segregation, demographic, and socioeconomic characteristics, we find that the black-white disparity in pediatric asthma remains and slightly widens. We also find that the level of segregation, as measured by the index of dissimilarity and black isolation, moderates the association between children’s race and asthma. In areas with lower levels of dissimilarity and black isolation, whites’ predicted probabilities of asthma are greater than those of black children. However, when the index of dissimilarity is at least 60% and the black isolation is at least 50%, the racial disparity reverses, and black children’s predicted probabilities of asthma are significantly higher than those of whites.