Investigating the Intergenerational Impact of Redlining on Intergenerational Wealth, Employment Quality, and Obesity: A Quasi-Experimental Study

Abstract

Obesity, the second leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States (U.S.), disproportionately impacts marginalized communities especially those impacted by systemic racism. Redlining, a form of structural racism, is a practice by which federal agencies and banks disproportionality assigned high credit risk and less favorable loan terms to neighborhoods where predominantly racialized minorities lived, contributing to residential segregation. Communities affected by structural racism are more likely to live in unhealthy, obesogenic environments. This dissertation employed data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the Mapping Inequality project to implement a quasi-experimental design, known as a geographical regression discontinuity design, to explore the generational impact of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) redlining policies on wealth, employment, and body mass index (BMI) outcomes. The study’s specific aims included: (1a) identifying the impact of neighborhood-level structural racism on intergenerational wealth accumulation, (1b) testing the effect of neighborhood-level structural racism on BMI over multiple generations; (2) examining the relationship between neighborhood-level structural racism and employment quality; and (3) assessing the mediating role of intergenerational wealth and employment quality on the relationship between structural racism and BMI outcomes in adults. The study's findings indicated that the grandchildren of individuals who had resided in redlined neighborhoods exhibit lower average household wealth, consistently lower quality employment outcomes, and higher mean BMI measurements when compared to their peers (grandchildren with a grandparent who resided in yellow-lined areas). Moreover, the study showed no evidence of a mediating generational effects of grandparents' experience with redlining on grandchildren’s mean BMI through the intergenerational wealth and employment quality of grandchildren. These findings suggest that policymakers should invest in further research that targets understanding the consequences of historical discrimination and explore policies aimed at rectifying intergenerational harm to promote restorative justice for families impacted by discriminatory federal policies such as redlining.