Effect of area-level socioeconomic deprivation on mental and physical health: A longitudinal natural experiment among refugees in Germany.

ABSTRACT: Existing studies on contextual health effects struggle to account for compositional bias, limiting causal interpretation. We use refugee dispersal in Germany as a natural experiment to study the effect of area-level socioeconomic deprivation on mental and physical health, while considering the potential mediating role of neighbourhood characteristics. Refugees subject to dispersal (n = 1466) are selected from a nation-wide longitudinal refugee study (IAB-SOEP-BAMF Panel; 2016-2018). Multi-level linear regression models, adjusted for age, sex, education, country of origin, federal state, asylum status and length of residence in Germany, are fitted to the change in mental and physical health subscales of the SF-12 depending on quintiles (Q1 - Q5) of commune-level socioeconomic deprivation (G

SUBMITTER: Biddle L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10832457 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature