A Genetically-Informed Study of Neighborhoods and Health: Results from the MIDUS Twin Sample.

Objectives: To examine whether neighborhood income and neighborhood safety concerns influence multi-system physiological risk after adjusting for genetic and environmental selection effects that may have biased previous tests of this association.

Methods: We used structural equation modeling with a genetically informed sample of 686 male and female twin pairs in the Midlife in the United States Study II (2004).

Results: Controlling for additive genetic and shared environmental processes that may have biased neighborhood-health links in previous examinations, higher neighborhood safety concerns were associated with less physiological risk among women but not men.

Discussion: Our findings suggest a possible causal role of neighborhood features for a measure of physiological risk that is associated with the development of disease. Efforts to increase neighborhood safety, perhaps through increased street lighting or neighborhood watch programs, may improve community-level health.