Low income, community poverty and risk of end stage renal disease

BMC Nephrology

Table 2 County characteristics by county poverty levels (based on 2010 U.S. census data)

	Concentrated poverty				Neither	Affluence
Characteristic	High outlier	Extremely high	Very high	High	Neither	Low/Very low poverty	Low outlier poverty
Neighborhood poverty Z-scores	-2.07	-3.26	-3.06	-1.64	0.78	1.82	2.21
Mean Gini index	0.47	0.51	0.47	0.48	0.46	0.44	0.44
Households below poverty (%)	21.4	29.1	24.8	19.7	15.6	12.2	11.6
Female-headed household (%)	30.8	34.6	29.2	27.7	22.2	17.7	17.2
Median income	$41,449	$30,950	$33,407	$41,375	$49,005	$53,279	$54,725
Household income < $30,000 (%)	30.9	42.0	38.6	31.1	25.6	22.0	20.9
No vehicle (%)	13.4	14.4	10.1	8.6	8.2	6.5	4.6
Vacant housing (%)	15.4	21.2	16.2	14.3	12.3	9.9	13.5
Public assistance (%)	18.3	22.9	19.2	15.4	10.6	9.7	8.4
Unemployed (%)	12.1	10.3	8.7	7.1	7.2	6.5	6.1

Note: P-values for all rows were <0.05. Categories of county poverty were defined as: high outlier poverty, extremely high poverty, very high poverty, high poverty, neither, high affluence (low/very low poverty) and outlier affluence (low outlier poverty) [26]. Outlier counties are those that are more impoverished or affluent than would be expected given the level of poverty or affluence of the adjoining counties. The neighborhood poverty score was calculated as the sum of the Z-scores of six measures of material well-being collected by the 2010 U.S. Census at the census block level. Higher values indicate greater neighborhood poverty. The Gini index is a measure of income inequality within a county, with higher values indicative of greater inequality.

ISSN: 1471-2369