Gripes from the poor

NY Times reports:

Zillow.com, the Web site that provides free home valuations, has been accused by a coalition of community activist groups of undervaluing the homes in black and Latino neighborhoods.

Those groups are unhappy that poor neighborhoods are now so easily identified as being. Before they try to get poor people to move, they might want to read this:

For poor people, living in an affluent area can be a health hazard. That is the provocative conclusion of a study of the death records of more than 8000 people living in four US cities.

The ill effects of being poor or living in economically disadvantaged areas have been demonstrated before, but it is unusual to consider both factors in the same study. When Marilyn Winkleby and colleagues at Stanford University in California did so, they were surprised to find that death rates in four Californian cities were highest for poor people living in the richest neighbourhoods (American Journal of Public Health, DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2004.060970).

Maybe they are better off living in those poor neighborhoods, and using Zillow to find those neighborhoods.