The role of neighborhood and household level socio-economic status in determining air pollution exposure in two Indian cities

Abstract Although recent studies indicate that air pollution exposure affects lower socioeconomic groups more, there is limited evidence regarding the relative influence of household and neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) on air pollution exposure in lower- and middle-income country settings. We evaluated the associations between neighborhood- and household-level SES metrics and exposure to ambient particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) in two populous Indian cities, ‒Delhi and Chennai. We used data from the Center for cArdiometabolic Risk Reduction in SouthAsia cohort study to obtain household-level SES indicators such as household income, years of education, and wealth index score. Neighborhood-level SES was calculated based on ward-level socio-demographic variables from the 2011 Census of India. Daily average PM 2.5 for the years 2010–2016 at a spatial resolution of 1 km × 1 km, were obtained from a hybrid exposure model for each city. For both cities, we observed a stronger association between neighborhood-level SES and ambient PM 2.5 , than household level SES. The study signifies that neighborhood-level SES factors are important confounders that should be considered while examining the relationship between ambient PM 2.5 exposure and health outcomes in the study area.