Racial, Ethnic, and Socioeconomic Disparities in Multiple Measures of Blue and Green Spaces in the United States.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Several studies have evaluated whether the distribution of natural environments differs between marginalized and privileged neighborhoods. However, most studies restricted their analyses to a single or handful of cities and used different natural environment measures.

Objectives

We evaluated whether natural environments are inequitably distributed based on socioeconomic status (SES) and race/ethnicity in the contiguous United States.

Methods

We obtained SES and race/ethnicity data (2015-2019) for all U.S. Census tracts. For each tract, we calculated the Normalized Different Vegetation Index (NDVI) for 2020, NatureScore (a proprietary measure of the quantity and quality of natural elements) for 2019, park cover for 2020, and blue space for 1984-2018. We used

SUBMITTER: Klompmaker JO 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9875842 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature