Urban Green Space: Creating a Triple Win for Environmental Sustainability, Health, and Health Equity through Behavior Change.

Urbanization, costs of green space maintenance, and diminishing connection between people and nature all exert pressures on urban green space. This is regrettable as green space has the potential to create wins for environmental sustainability, health, and health equity. This paper explores this potential triple win and investigates how to increase the use of urban green space through behavior change. A narrative literature review was conducted and was supplemented with literature suggested by experts. Results show that creating well-designed green spaces and stimulating people to use them can indeed deliver this triple win. Providing accessible, attractive, well-maintained green space with room for socialization, and where people feel safe, may increase the opportunity and motivation of people to use it more often. Informing and educating people and organizing activities may increase capability (and motivation) to use green space. Since the use of green space depends on life stage, lifestyle factors and individual values, it is important to involve potential users in its design. We recommend a specific focus on those groups who may benefit most from the use of green space. More evaluation is needed to inform effective green space interventions and to assess related economic, social, and environmental benefits.

Stability and variability in income position over time: exploring their role in self-rated health in Swedish survey data.

BACKGROUND: The adverse relationship between income and health is well documented, but less is known of how income trajectories, i.e. downward or upward trends in income, determine health. We therefore link longitudinal income information to cross-sectional data on self-rated health and conduct logistic regression models in order to investigate income trends over time and their relationship with health. METHODS: The data, with the exception of income information, are derived from the Swedish Level-of-Living Survey 2000. The information on income was drawn from the income register covering the period 1995 to 2000. We used an age-restricted sample of those 30-64 years of age, and generated a series of models accounting for average income position, lagged income position, income decrease and increase, and annual periods in specific income positions. The analysis was conducted for men and women separately. RESULTS: Apart from the overall association between income and health, we found a similar pattern when including average and lagged income in the model. The analysis of length of time in a specific income position showed substantial sex differences in poor health. Income decrease was more strongly associated with men's poor health, whereas income increase revealed only weak associations with self-rated health. CONCLUSIONS: It was shown that income changes and the time dimension of income are important for self-rated health. Self-rated health responds to decreases in absolute income and lowered rank position in the income distribution to a greater extent than to income gains over time. Lagged lower income position and its associations with health suggest that socio-economic disadvantages accumulate over time.

The family's economic resources and adolescents' health complaints--do adolescents' own economic resources matter?

BACKGROUND: The present study focuses on the relevance of economic resources to psychological and psychosomatic health complaints during adolescence. It explores the link between the family's and the adolescent's economic resources and investigates whether or not differences in health complaints by the family's financial situation can be explained by adolescents' own economic resources. METHODS: Drawing on data from two Swedish surveys on living conditions during adolescence (in the age group 10-18 years) conducted in 2002-03, logistic regressions were used to assess the associations between adolescents' own and household economic resources on two measures of health complaints. RESULTS: The association between family economic hardship (i.e. lack of cash margin) and adolescents' health complaints largely disappeared when controlling for adolescents' own economic resources. Three measures of own absolute and relative economic resources were used. Out of these, the ability (or not) to buy things that others have was connected with both psychological [Odds ratio (OR) 2.16, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.6-2.9] and psychosomatic complaints (OR 1.67, 95% CI 1.3-2.1), irrespective of age and gender. The importance of lacking a personal cash margin or not being able to join friends seemed to differ between age groups and genders. CONCLUSIONS: The importance of different aspects of economic resources seems to vary across age groups and gender. However, not being able to buy things that others have was clearly associated with health complaints irrespective of age and gender. Family economic hardship was associated with adolescents' health complaints, and this association was largely explained by adolescents' own economic resources.

Relative deprivation and mortality--a longitudinal study in a Swedish population of 4.7 million, 1990-2006.

BACKGROUND: Relative deprivation has previously been discussed as a possible mechanism underlying the income-health relation. The idea is that income matters to the individual's health, over and above the increased command over resources, as the basis of social comparisons between a person and his or her reference group. The following study aimed to analyze the role of individual-level relative deprivation for all-cause mortality in the Swedish population. The Swedish context, characterized by relatively small income inequalities and promoting values as egalitarianism and equality, together with a large data material provide unique possibilities for analyzing the hypothesized mechanism. METHODS: The data used are prospective longitudinal data from the Swedish population and based on a linkage of registers. Restricting selection to individuals 25-64 years, alive January 1st 1990, gave 4.7 million individuals, for whom a mortality follow-up was done over a 16-year period. The individual level relative deprivation was measured using the Yitzhaki index, calculating the accumulated shortfall between the individual's income and the income of all other's in the person's reference group. All-cause mortality was used as the outcome measure. RESULTS: Relative deprivation, generated through social comparisons, is one possible mechanism within the income and health relation. The present study analyzed different types of objectively defined reference groups, all based on the idea that people compare themselves to similar others. Results show relative deprivation, when measured by the Yitzhaki index, to be significantly associated with mortality. Also, we found a stronger effect among men than among women. Analyzing the association within different income strata, the effect was shown to be weak among the poorest. Revealing the importance of relative deprivation for premature mortality, over and above the effect of absolute income, these results resemble previous findings. CONCLUSION: Relative deprivation, based on social comparisons of income, is significantly associated with premature mortality in Sweden, over and above the effect of absolute income. Also, it was found to be more important among men, but weak among the poorest.

On the importance of internalized consumption norms for ill health.

AIM: Relative deprivation has in previous studies been put forward as a possible mechanism in the income and health relation. To capture the importance of social comparisons analytically has been problematic due to the difficulty in identifying reference groups of significance for the individual. The authors suggest that using the individual's own preferences, arguing these to be preferences of both society and reference groups internalized by the individual, may partly bridge this problem. METHODS: The study is based on the Swedish Survey of Living Conditions 1998 including a list of 37 consumption items and activities. By counting the items that the individual cannot afford, but at the same time considers to be a necessity and something that all adults should afford, a measure of self-rated deprivation (SRD) is constructed. The outcome measure used is less than good self-rated health and limiting longstanding illness. Men and women aged 25-64 years are included. RESULTS: Over the different groups of self-rated deprivation a clear gradient in ill health, for both health measures, was found among women. The results for men seemed to dichotomize between non-deprived and those deprived on at least one item. The logistic regression models showed that even after adjusting for socioeconomic group and cash margin, there was a significant effect of self-rated deprivation. CONCLUSIONS: A significant relation was found between self-rated deprivation and ill health, both less than good health and limiting longstanding illness. Self-rated deprivation had a stronger impact on women than men.

Exploring relative deprivation: is social comparison a mechanism in the relation between income and health?

During the last decade there has been a growing interest in the relation between income and health. The discussion has mostly focused on the individual's relative standing in the income distribution with the implicit understanding that the absolute level of income is not as relevant when the individual's basic needs are fulfilled. This study hypothesises relative deprivation to be a mechanism in the relation between income and health in Sweden: being relatively deprived in comparison to a reference group causes a stressful situation, which might affect self-rated health. Reference groups were formed by combining indicators of social class, age and living region, resulting in 40 reference groups. Within each of these groups a mean income level was calculated and individuals with an income below 70% of the mean income level in the reference group were considered as being relatively deprived. The results showed that more women than men were relatively deprived, but the effect of relative deprivation on self-rated health was more pronounced among men than among women. In order to estimate the importance of the effect of relative income versus the effect of absolute income, some analyses on the effect of relative deprivation on self-rated health were also carried out within different absolute income levels. When restricting the analysis to the lowest 40% of the income span the effect of relative deprivation almost disappeared. Relative deprivation may have a significant relation to health among men. However, for the 40% with the lowest income in the population the effect of relative deprivation on health is considerably reduced, possibly due to the more prominent relation between low absolute income and poor health.