Timo M. Kauppinen

Effects of the characteristics of neighbourhoods and the characteristics of people on cause specific mortality: a register based follow up study of 252 000 men

Study objective: To assess the strength of the associations between neighbourhood characteristics and mortality, after adjusting for individual characteristics. Design and setting: 1990 census records of over 25 year old men in the Helsinki Metropolitan area linked to death records in 1991–1995; almost 1.22 million person years and 15 000 deaths. Individual characteristics were education, occupation based social class, housing tenure, housing density, and living arrangements. Proportion of manual workers, proportion of over 60 year olds, and social cohesion were measured for 55 small areas, and SAS Glimmix was used to fit multilevel models. Main results: Men in areas with high proportion of manual workers and low social cohesion have high mortality, particularly among 25–64 year olds. About 70% of this excess mortality is explained by compositional differences of people living in these areas. Accidents and violence, circulatory diseases, and alcohol related causes contribute most to these area effects. Area characteristics do not consistently modify or mediate the effects of individual socioeconomic characteristics on mortality. Conclusions: As compared with individual characteristics neighbourhood characteristics have modest independent effects on male mortality. Furthermore, individual socioeconomic characteristics are associated with mortality independently of area characteristics. Rather than the characteristics of areas, other social contexts, such as peer groups and family settings may be more fruitful targets for further research and policy on contextual effects on mortality.

What Mix Matters? Exploring the Relationships between Individuals' Incomes and Different Measures of their Neighbourhood Context

There is substantial interest among policy makers in both Western Europe and North America in reducing concentrations of disadvantaged households through initiatives to enhance the ‘social mix’ of neighbourhoods. However, there is little consideration or understanding with regard to which mix of household characteristics matters most in influencing the socio-economic outcomes for individual residents. This paper explores the degree to which a wide variety of 1995 neighbourhood conditions in Sweden are statistically related to earnings for all adult metropolitan and non-metropolitan men and women during the 1996–99 period, controlling for a wide variety of personal characteristics. The paper finds that the extremes of the neighbourhood income distribution, operationalized by the percentages of adult males with earnings in the lowest 30th and the highest 30th percentiles, hold greater explanatory power than domains of household mix related to education, ethnicity or housing tenure. Separating the effects of having substantial shares of low and high income neighbours, it is found that it is the presence of the former that means most for the incomes of metropolitan and non-metropolitan men and women, with the largest effects for metropolitan men.

Neighbourhood unemployment and all cause mortality: a comparison of six countries

Study objective: Studies have shown that living in more deprived neighbourhoods is related to higher mortality rates, independent of individual socioeconomic characteristics. One approach that contributes to understanding the processes underlying this association is to examine whether the relation is modified by the country context. In this study, the size of the association between neighbourhood unemployment rates and all cause mortality was compared across samples from six countries (United States, Netherlands, England, Finland, Italy, and Spain). Design: Data from three prospective cohort studies (ARIC (US), GLOBE (Netherlands), and Whitehall II (England)) and three population based register studies (Helsinki, Turin, Madrid) were analysed. In each study, neighbourhood unemployment rates were derived from census, register based data. Cox proportional hazard models, taking into account the possible correlation of outcomes among people of the same neighbourhood, were used to assess the associations between neighbourhood unemployment and all cause mortality, adjusted for education and occupation at the individual level. Results: In men, after adjustment for age, education, and occupation, living in the quartile of neighbourhoods with the highest compared with the lowest unemployment rates was associated with increased hazards of mortality (14%–46%), although for the Whitehall II study associations were not statistically significant. Similar patterns were found in women, but associations were not statistically significant in two of the five studies that included women. Conclusions: Living in more deprived neighbourhoods is associated with increased all cause mortality in the US and five European countries, independent of individual socioeconomic characteristics. There is no evidence that country substantially modified this association.

The beginning of immigrant settlement in the Helsinki metropolitan area and the role of social housing

Finland has experienced a rapid increase inimmigration since the beginning of the 1990s.Almost half of the foreign population isconcentrated in the metropolitan area of thecapital, Helsinki. The development andexplanations of their settlement patterns havenot yet been thoroughly studied. It ishypothesised in this study that social housingcan explain the settlement patterns. Indices ofdissimilarity were calculated to study thelevel and development of spatial segregation ofimmigrant groups in the Helsinki metropolitanarea in 1995–99, and the association betweenthe settlement patterns of immigrants andsocial housing was studied by regressionanalysis. Neighbourhood-level data were used.The results indicate that the Helsinkimetropolitan area has avoided extreme ethnicsegregation so far and that segregation isdecreasing. Especially immigrants from poorcountries are clearly associated with socialhousing in their settlement patterns, evenafter adjustment for socio-economic anddemographic differentiation. Also newconstruction of social housing seems to haveaffected the spatial distribution of thisgroup. Despite this dependence, the group isnot extremely segregated, which is probablybecause the social housing sector is nottotally marginalised.

Social background and life-course risks as determinants of social assistance receipt among young adults in Sweden, Norway and Finland

We analyse the determinants of social assistance receipt among young adults in three Nordic countries, focusing on social-background and life-course events during early adulthood. We ask whether they are related differently to short-term and long-term receipt. Short-term poverty could be more individualized than long-term poverty which can be expected to be more strongly related to social background. We applied generalized ordinal logit modelling to longitudinal register-based data. Both social-background and life-course factors were found to be important, but our results did not confirm the hypothesis of social background predicting mostly long-term receipt and life-course factors predicting mostly short-term receipt. Leaving the parental home early and parental social assistance receipt were important determinants of social assistance receipt, and both factors predicted longer duration of receipt as well. We found some differences between the countries, which may be related to differences in youth unemployment and social welfare systems.

School Outcomes and Neighbourhood Effects: A New Approach Using Data from Finland

Studies consistently show that the Finnish educational system is one of the best in the world with only small variations in educational outcomes between pupils and schools. In this chapter, it is argued that these country level observations hide dramatic variations within the country: when educational outcomes are studied for the Helsinki Metropolitan area, large variations can be found between neighbourhoods, schools, and individuals. Recent research suggests that these differences are growing, making the Helsinki Metropolitan area an attractive “urban laboratory” as neighbourhood effects are generally assumed to intensify as socio-spatial segregation increases. The chapter presents a critical commentary on results from a study on neighbourhood effects and educational outcomes, using data for Finland. The chapter ends with the presentation of the design of a new research project funded by the Finnish National Research Council, and the Academy of Finland, to overcome some of the shortcomings of previous research. The study will collect longitudinal data on a large sample of pupils with detailed information about individuals, households, schools and neighbourhoods. This design will allow the use of multilevel models to estimate neighbourhood effects.

Spatial Integration of Immigrants in Nordic Cities: The Relevance of Spatial Assimilation Theory in a Welfare State Context

This article investigates the relevance of spatial assimilation theory in Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo, and Stockholm. An important backdrop is the “Nordic model of welfare”: We assume that welfare generosity decreases the speed of spatial integration. The study uses non-Western immigrants as a target group and natives as a reference group. We register location in 2000 and 2008, and analyze integration in terms of neighborhood status and residential segregation. The results show, in all cities, a lack of aggregate upward mobility in the spatial hierarchy. We also find a negligible effect of upward earnings mobility on upward spatial mobility. Upward spatial mobility increases integration in ethnic terms, but other factors work in the opposite direction and contribute to prevailing segregation. The results as a whole strengthen the purported association between welfare state characteristics and spatial integration. Deviant outcomes, particularly in Helsinki, are explained by immigration history and housing market structure.

Unemployment During a Recession and Later Earnings: Does the Neighbourhood Unemployment Rate Modify the Association?

Experience of unemployment is known to predict poorer future success in the labour market. It is less well known how much this depends on the characteristics of the local social environment. This paper builds on the supposition that the unemployment rate in the neighbourhood modifies the social processes linking personal unemployment to later labour market outcomes. Data from the Helsinki metropolitan area in Finland during and after a deep recession in the 1990s are used to analyse the effect of personal unemployment on later earnings by neighbourhood unemployment rate. Results indicate that the neighbourhood unemployment rate modifies the effect of personal unemployment: a higher neighbourhood unemployment rate predicts lower later earnings, especially for males. A similar effect is not found in the case of employed residents.

Determinants of immigrants’ entry to homeownership in three Nordic capital city regions

Abstract The extent of homeownership among immigrants may be seen as an indicator of integration and as a determinant of ethnic residential segregation. Studies have shown differences in the determinants of homeownership between immigrants and natives, indicating that variation in homeownership is not only a function of differences in economic resources. These studies have largely focused on Anglo‐American contexts, using mostly cross‐sectional data. We apply survival analysis methods to analyse the determinants of entry to homeownership in the capital regions of three Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland and Sweden – utilizing longitudinal individual‐level register‐based datasets. We find that differences in entry to homeownership between natives and different immigrant groups cannot be explained by differences in socio‐economic background factors. We also find differences in the effects of these factors. Effects of income are generally weaker among non‐Western immigrants and immigrants are less responsive to changes in household composition. The share of non‐Western immigrants in the neighbourhood is only weakly related to entry to homeownership, while immigrants and natives living in public rental housing tend to be slightly less inclined to move to homeownership. Weaker income effects among immigrants, weak effects of ethnic segregation and the importance of the public rental sector differentiate our results from earlier findings. Weaker income effects may indicate that uncertainty about the future also affects middle‐income immigrants. Differences between the three contexts in housing markets and policies do not seem to matter much, although the results indicate that difficult access to the private rental sector may push immigrants to homeownership.

Entry to homeownership among immigrants: a decomposition of factors contributing to the gap with native-born residents

Abstract This article contributes to research on the homeownership gap between immigrants and native-born residents in Western countries, extending earlier research using longitudinal data and studying a country with a short history of immigration. Discrete-time survival analysis and statistical decomposition are applied to compare the duration of entry to homeownership between non-Western immigrants and native-born residents moving to the Helsinki Metropolitan Area in Finland, using individual-level register-based data from 1990 to 2008. The results show considerable differences between groups in the speed of entry to homeownership. The majority of these differences can be explained by observed differences in economic and demographic characteristics. Therefore, differences in economic integration are an important explanation for the homeownership gaps. However, for some groups, considerable gaps remain, requiring additional explanations. From a methodological viewpoint, the results indicate that in cross-sectional analyses, the significance of economic resources as an explanation for the homeownership gaps may be underestimated.