Move to Move? Neighborhood Fitness Culture and Exercise Among Older Adults

• In Event: Food and Fitness

Abstract

Regular physical activity is an important determinant of healthy aging, yet exercise participation varies substantially across neighborhoods in the United States. A central challenge in interpreting these differences is separating true neighborhood effects from residential sorting. This paper examines whether neighborhood fitness culture shapes exercise behavior among older adults using nationally representative longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study from 2004 to 2022. The analysis focuses on residential movers and uses variation in neighborhood exercise culture across origin and destination ZIP codes to identify place-based influences on physical activity. I measure neighborhood fitness culture using local exercise prevalence and construct a place-based treatment that captures how much more or less active the destination neighborhood is relative to the origin.

 The empirical strategy uses movers only and decomposes origin and destination locations into separate place components, allowing me to estimate whether moves to systematically more active places are associated with higher post-move exercise participation. I find that older adults who relocate to neighborhoods with stronger fitness culture become more likely to exercise after the move. The estimated place shock is positive and statistically significant, indicating that differences across destination and origin neighborhoods meaningfully predict changes in exercise behavior. Additional analyses suggest that these patterns are especially pronounced among individuals who were previously inactive and among older adults in later life stages, consistent with the idea that neighborhood environments can play an important role in shaping preventive health behavior even at older ages. Overall, the findings suggest that local fitness culture is an important determinant of exercise behavior among older adults. More broadly, the results highlight the role of residential environments in generating spatial disparities in healthy aging and suggest that policies that strengthen neighborhood-level opportunities and norms for physical activity may increase exercise participation and reduce inequalities in healthy aging.

Author

• Jong Min (Jason) Jung, University of Washington
  Presenting Author