WASHINGTON — A new study out of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore says that income, race and ethnicity play more of a role in a child’s asthma risk than where he lives.
Researchers say that being poor, black or Puerto Rican are the most important factors that determine a child’s asthma risk.
The study, published Tuesday in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, contradicts previous health assumptions that living in a big city increased a child’s risk of asthma.
Lead study author Dr. Corinne Keet, a pediatric allergy and asthma specialist at Johns Hopkins, says where there is poverty – whether it’s the inner city or in suburban areas — children are at risk for asthma.
“There are pockets of high asthma rates throughout the country, they are not just in the inner cities,” she said to CBS.
“Twenty or 30 years ago, the areas that had the most concentrated poverty were really in the inner cities. Although there still are a lot of very poor inner-city areas in the U.S. right now, the highest rate of concentrated poverty is in the suburban areas.”
In the study, researchers used national survey data on more than 23,000 children aged 6 to 17 between 2009 and 2011 and looked at rates of asthma based on population figures as well as factors such as income, race and ethnicity.
After adjusting for those factors, they found that although the prevalence of asthma is high in some inner-city areas, this is largely explained by demographic factors and not by living in an urban neighborhood.
They found black or Puerto Rican children had far higher asthma rates, at 17 percent and 20 percent, respectively, compared with white children (10 percent), other Hispanic children (9 percent) and Asian children (8 percent).
Also, the study found inner-city children had asthma rates of 12.9 percent compared to the 10.6 percent in non-inner-city areas.
Although the study did not look at the cause for the asthma rates, the researchers did note that other studies suggest potential genetic and biologic causes for these racial and ethnic differences.
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