Publication type
Research Paper
Authors
Publication date
May 20, 2026
Summary:
Residential greenness may support wellbeing, but evidence on whether these benefits differ across socially patterned populations remains limited. We examined associations between residential greenness and wellbeing across populaton strata defined by sex, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (SES) based on data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, a population-representative and ethnically diverse sample from the UK (n = 26,322). Residential greenness was measured using neighbourhood Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and wellbeing was operationalised as self-reported life satisfaction. We applied a novel intersectional Multilevel Analysis of Individual Heterogeneity and Discriminatory Accuracy (MAIHDA) approach to estimate associations at the population level and across strata. The results showed that at the population level NDVI was positively associated with life satisfaction (B = 0.54). However, associations substantially varied across intersecting social groups (range of slope estimates: 0.2–0.8). Significant positive associations were observed for all strata except for high-SES White groups. For these latter groups, confidence interval included the null value and were significantly different from certain low-SES non-White groups. These findings suggest that average exposure-outcome estimates may underestimate the wellbeing benefits of residential greenness for socially disadvantaged populations. The results support an equity-oriented interpretation of urban greening and underscore the value of intersectional approaches in environmental health research.
DOI
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6799441
Subjects
#589231