According to a recently published study, Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities A study uncovers a persistent relationship between increasing school segregation and racial health disparities in the United States. Researchers found that while residential segregation has remained largely unchanged from 1991 to 2020, school segregation has increased. Increasing school segregation is correlated with increasing racial health disparities.
“While there have been numerous papers looking at the health effects of residential segregation, and several papers have looked at the health effects of residential segregation, very few have looked at the effects of both types of segregation simultaneously,” said Michael Siegel, a professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine and an author of the study.
“Furthermore, while there are many cross-sectional studies examining the relationship between racial segregation and health outcomes; change “How does isolation affect health, and how does that affect subsequent health outcomes? These were the two main new research questions we asked in this study.”
The researchers analyzed data from 1,051 US counties spanning nearly three decades, from 1991 to 2020. They collected information on racial segregation using racial composition data from the US Census. They measured racial segregation using the dissimilarity index and entropy index for residential segregation, and the normalized exposure index for school segregation. These indices indicate the extent to which black and white populations are segregated within residential areas and schools.
Health status was assessed using several indicators, including life expectancy, premature mortality (death before age 65), infant mortality, firearm homicide rate, total homicide rate, and teen birth rate. These health status data were extracted from reliable sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s WONDER database and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
The researchers found that residential segregation remained relatively stable, with little overall change, from 1991 to 2020. In contrast, school segregation increased significantly over the same period, particularly from 1991 to 2000, and then remained at high levels through 2020.
“I was surprised to see that racial segregation in schools has increased rather than decreased in recent years,” Siegel told SyPost.
Counties with higher levels of school segregation have larger racial disparities in several health outcomes: These counties have larger disparities in life expectancy, premature mortality, infant mortality, firearm homicide, total homicide, and teen birth rates compared to counties with lower levels of school segregation.
“We find that from 1991 to 2020, residential segregation by race remained essentially unchanged for the 1,051 counties in our sample,” Siegel said, “but school segregation by race increased during this period. Moreover, increases in school segregation from 1991 to 2000 were associated with higher racial disparities in health outcomes and less progress in reducing these disparities between 2000 and 2020.”
The researchers also found that counties with the highest levels of residential and school segregation, and those that experienced the greatest increases in school segregation, had the poorest health outcomes. These counties were primarily urban, densely populated, and often located in the Northeast and Midwest.
One key finding is that school segregation emerged as an independent predictor of racial health disparities, meaning that reducing school segregation could have a large positive impact on reducing health disparities, even in counties with high residential segregation.
“This paper provides new evidence that school segregation is associated with increased racial health disparities, even after accounting for the degree of racial residential segregation,” Siegel explained. “This means that reducing school segregation may be effective in reducing racial health disparities.”
However, like any study, this one comes with some caveats: For example, the analysis was limited to counties with sufficient data, which may limit the generalizability of the results.
“Limited data availability means that our analysis of some health conditions excludes a large number of counties,” Siegel noted, “which means readers should be careful when generalizing our findings to all counties. Our next plan is to examine the relationship between past redlining and current health conditions.”
The study, “Associations between changes in racial residential and school segregation and trends in racial health disparities, 2000-2020: A life course perspective,” was written by Michael Siegel and Vanessa Nicholson Robinson.
