Neighborhood Social and Environmental Factors and Asthma Among Children Living in Low-Income Neighborhoods: The Importance of Informal Social Control.

Despite the knowledge that children in low-income neighborhoods are particularly vulnerable to asthma, few studies of child asthma focus on variation among low-income neighborhoods. We examined the relationship between child asthma and features associated with neighborhood poverty including safety, social cohesion, informal social control, collective efficacy, and disorder, across a sample of children from low-income neighborhoods (N = 3010; 2005-2007). Results show that the relationship between asthma and poverty is accounted for by family-level characteristics, but informal social control remains significantly and positively related to asthma after accounting for family-level characteristics. We discuss the importance of neighborhood environmental features for children's asthma.