Health Impact of gentrification of adults from the EPIPorto cohort: a quasi-experimental study
JA Figueiredo, H Alves, C Moreira, AI RibeiroAbstract
Background
Gentrification is an emerging global phenomenon associated with complex transformations in the built and social environment. Although it represents an important public health concern, evidence on its impact on population health remains scarce and contradictory, with studies identifying both beneficial and harmful health effects. This limits the development of evidence-informed policies. This study assessed the health impacts of the neighborhood-level gentrification among adults from Porto, a recognized hotspot of transnational gentrification.
Methods
A quasi-experimental study was conducted using georeferenced data from the EPIPorto population-based cohort (n = 2485) from Porto Metropolitan Area (Northern Portugal) whose inception was in 1999. Transnational gentrification was computed using 2011 and 2021 census and touristic accommodation data through Principal Component Analysis (PCA), resulting in an index that allowed the delimitation of gentrifying and non-gentrifying neighbourhoods. Difference-in-Differences (DiD) was used to assess the impact of gentrification on ten selected health outcomes, including body mass index, cholesterol, alcohol and tobacco consumption and sleep duration. Adjustment was made for potential confounders. Inverse probability of censoring weighting was used to account for bias related to loss to follow-up and missing data.
Results
26.2% of participants resided in gentrifying neighbourhoods. In the DiD analysis, no statistically significant associations were found between gentrification and the evaluated health outcomes, except for sleep duration (-0.346 95% CI: −0.650; −0.042), suggesting that participants living in gentrifying neighbourhoods experienced a reduction in the number of hours of sleep.
Conclusions
This study found limited evidence of consistent associations between neighbourhood gentrification and most health outcomes, highlighting the complex and dual nature of its health impacts and the need for continued monitoring.