#HOLC NCRC Health Indicators

#Introduction The novel coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated many racial health inequities that existed well before this public health crisis. Americans of color have disproportionately been infected by and died from COVID-19. They are more likely to have underlying health conditions that increase the risk of severe illness from COVID-19. While COVID-19 has pushed racial health inequities into the national spotlight, the underlying differences in social, economic, and environmental conditions that give rise to inequities in COVID-19 infection, transmission, and severe illness are far from new.

The twentieth century's formal and informal practices of racial residential segregation have systematically shaped characteristics of the built environment that may increase susceptibility to not only COVID-19 but other underlying health conditions that increase the susceptibility to and severity of illness from COVID-19. Racial residential segregation may impact health through poor housing conditions, disparities in educational and employment opportunities, inadequate transportation infrastructure, access to healthcare, and economic instability. Where people live impacts their exposure to health-promoting resources and opportunities (i.e., access to quality food, recreation, healthcare, etc.) as well as exposure to health-damaging threats (i.e., environmental pollutants, poor housing quality, etc.).

Among the most impactful practices that created these stark differences in neighborhood resource distribution and concentrated disadvantage was redlining: the practice of denying fair access to credit, particularly mortgages, based on the race of the residents of a neighborhood. For much of the twentieth century, the federal government encouraged redlining. In the 1930s a federal agency, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), graded neighborhoods in nearly 250 American cities scale neighborhoods on a four-grade scale, A to D, "Best" to "Hazardous," that were then visualized on a series of maps. Race was a key—arguably the key—variable in determining these grades. Neighborhoods of color received D or C grades with only white neighborhoods receiving A and B grades.

#Data The redlining data for the 1930s all comes from Mapping Inequality. Information about the archival sources for Mapping Inequality is available on its Downloads & Data page.

The data for contemporary age and poverty data comes from the U.S. Census's American Community Survey 2018 Data Release. Minority demographics, defined as "all people who were other than non-Hispanic White," dates from 2011-2015 and comes from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council's Census Information Sheets. Life expectancy estimates are from the CDC's U.S. Small-area Life Expectancy Estimates Project. Contemporary health data comes from the CDC's 500 Cities: Local Data for Better Health. See their Measure Definitions for complete details about how they define each health outcome. Data compiled by NCRC