Examining the differential association between self-rated health and area deprivation among white British and ethnic minority people in England

Recent discourses in the area of neighbourhood effects on health have advocated for a relational perspective of space and place, focussing on the mutually reinforcing and reciprocal relationship between the environment and the individual. An example of such relationship is that of the interaction between area deprivation and individual ethnicity on reports of self-rated health, which we explored using cross-sectional data from the 2007 Citizenship Survey linked to the 2001 UK census. We aimed to examine whether the association between area deprivation and poor self-rated health differs for ethnic minority groups, as compared to white British people. Following from this, we also examined whether possible differential associations were mediated by ethnic density effects and perceptions of and satisfaction with neighbourhood characteristics. Results of random effects multilevel logistic regression models showed the detrimental association between area deprivation and self-rated health to be of greater magnitude and stronger for white British people than for ethnic minority people. This differential association was not mediated by ethnic density effects or perceptions of and satisfaction with neighbourhood characteristics. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.