The Spirit Level Summary

The main topic the second section; place matters, is the reasons why something as simple as your street address can be an influential predictor on your health. Within this section of the movie there were three arguments; the first consists of two direct causes of impact on residents’ health, which were; built space and social environment. The next was how the conditions of neighborhoods have an indirect impact on health by making healthy choices either unreachable, extremely hard, or easy. These two arguments were shown through the increase of Latinos and Asians who have been moving into the deteriorating, predominantly black, urban neighborhoods of Richmond, California. The diminishing neighborhoods caused little access to job opportunities,
segregation among the different races, proper nutrition, and adequate housing in (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009). All of which have caused harm to African Americans residents’ health. Not only do all these factors negatively affect African American residents but the new individuals health will suffer too. I vividly remember the movie mentioning the high amounts of pollutants released into the air. The unclean air causes an increase in asthma rates.
There was a specific example with one working mom who had a son with asthma; she stated that it costs about 3,000 dollars a year in hospital bills because of the pollution (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009). People of Richmond are at high risk for asthma, diabetes, and lower life expectancy. There are barely any fresh fruits and vegetables, and few places that are safe to play and get exercise. This puts a huge strain on the child obesity and hospitalization due to the inability of quality affordable housing. In chapter three of “The Spirit Level”, the authors address the impact of geographical mobility, that since we come into contact with more strangers, there is a greater chance for sickness (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009). As time continues the social conditions get worse, as conditions deplete so does health. The movie showed a perfect example of this, which stated that living in a disadvantaged neighborhood leads to a 50-80% increase in risk for heart disease. The main cause of this is chronic stress. Chronic stress consists of people constantly worrying about issues especially due to their surroundings. This can include; violence, little nutritious food, polluted environment, and poor schools just to name a few (Wilkinson and Pickett
2009). These lead to the last argument that, the neighborhood conditions are shaped by public policy choices and private investments. In order to stop these the neglect that leading to health risks the community, developers, and local government work together to approach changing this neighborhood. As health as the main focus they all work together using federal funding in order to create a mixed income community. As a community working together to benefit and create change for this neighborhood, children play in parks, gardeners grow and sell their products, get a sense of security in specially designed asthma safe homes (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009). Therefore making a change to improve and work together to benefit the community as a whole.