Measuring urban well-being: Race and gender matter

I Introduction THE RELATION BETWEEN THE ECONOMY AND SOCIETY has long been a subject of interest to economists and sociologists alike. A great number subscribe to the belief that strong economic growth, which gives rise to overall material expansion, will bring about welfare improvements to individuals, communities, and societies. With this belief comes the expectation that a booming economy will beget social progress. Stacked against this favorable economic picture is the nation's scorecard in the area of social development and progress in the quality of life (QOL). Several studies, each estimating social indicators, suggest declining social well-being since the 1970s. Such studies, however, focus attention at the national level, and often fail to provide insights into the actual conditions that are present at subnational levels. With increased attention being focused on the conditions of urban areas, the need for subnational evaluation is becoming more apparent. The growing diversity of the population and increase in femal e-headed households leaves researchers without resources for evaluating the conditions of these groups in smaller regional settings, in part due to the scarcity of well-being measurements at these levels. This study hopes to fill in the gap for measuring well-being at subnational levels by estimating indexes at the county level. Exactly how the level of urbanization and social well-being are related is the subject of our inquiry. Our analysis at the urban county level, largely directed by the availability of data, reflects our interest in studying well-being in urban areas, as they represent areas of both economic strength and social decline. Our estimations will focus on urban counties, with particular emphasis on the 50 largest counties. We aim to evaluate the well-being of the general population in metropolitan areas, comparing it to those for people of color and female heads of households. The next section of the paper summarizes existing literature on urban quality of life indicators constructed to date. In the third section we develop well-being indexes at the county level using the Human Development Index as our model. Indexes are constructed for the general population, as well as for both male- and female-headed households and white and black populations. The fourth section offers descriptive statistics and regression analysis in evaluating the well-being of the various groups in the 50 largest counties in examining the relationship between population size and well-being. The last section summarizes this study and offers areas for future research. II Literature Review IT IS OUR AIM TO STUDY the state of economic and social progress in urban areas. We begin with the a priori hypothesis of a negative correlation between urbanization, measured by population, (1) and social well-being. This is consistent with the casual observation that social conditions in large urban areas tend to be at best no better, and oftentimes worse, than those in smaller areas. We expect to find that social well-being declines as an area becomes more urbanized. Our survey of the social well-being literature offers preliminary support for this hypothesis. For instance, one reason why one might expect urban QOL to be lower than rural QOL is due to excess mortality or higher incidences of early deaths in urban areas (Geronimus 1999). The main causes of this are diseases related to stress, poverty, and urban lifestyle (such as cardiovascular ailments, malnutrition, and HIV/AIDS), as well as higher crime rates and homicides. In addition, high incidences of poverty in urban areas along with inequality of income (Levernier, Partridge, and Rickman 1998; Mills 1999) constrain an individual's ability to obtain decent health services (Steckel 1995). This is further complicated by other factors that affect the provision of decent health services. On one hand is the high demand for such services due to the sheer size of the population in urban areas; on the other hand is the limited supply of such services as local governments see their ability to mobilize necessary resources de cline, due to the greater mobility of the local population toward areas where fiscal incentives are more favorable (e. …