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Home > Health Sciences > JHDRP > Vol. 11 (2018) > Iss. 2

 

Keywords

Alternative financial services; payday lenders; health disparities; health; social determinants of health

Disciplines

Banking and Finance Law | Community Health and Preventive Medicine | Health Policy | Public Health | Public Health Education and Promotion | Public Policy

Abstract

Abstract

Alternative financial services (AFS) such as, payday lenders, pawn brokers, tax refund loans, and check cashers are more prevalent in minority and lower income neighborhoods. These are neighborhoods also found to have disparities in health, compared to more affluent neighborhoods and communities. The focus of this paper is to determine if any relationship exists between use of AFS and health disparities.

Using data from a survey performed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), we compared four banking variables to several measures of health for 85 metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) across the nation. The four banking variables all related to degrees of reliance on alternative financial services. The three health related measures were all-cause mortality, cancer mortality, and drug and alcohol related mortality. The regression analysis controlled for income, education, and relative size of the nonwhite population. We found that for all-cause mortality there is a statistically significant relationship between three of the four banking variables, in particular “Used an AFS” has a strong association with a coefficient of 0.25 and a p-value of 0.001.

The conclusion of this analysis is that when use of AFS increases for an MSA, health status declines, as seen with all-cause mortality. This study adds evidence to establish a finer and often unrecognized dimension of “social determinants of health.”

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