Methods/Statistics
The Impact of Census-Tract Level Mortgage Discrimination on Cognitive Function: Accounting for Measurement Error in Small-Area Data via Joint Modeling Yueying Hu* Yueying Hu Michael R. Elliott Helen C.S. Meier Liang Chen Monica E. Walters Laura B. Zahodne
Racial disparities in cognitive health reflect entrenched structural inequalities. This study investigates the association between census-tract level mortgage discrimination, operationalized as the Mortgage Density Index Ratio (MDIR), and cognitive outcomes among racially diverse older adults. Using data from the Michigan Cognitive Aging Project (MCAP), a cohort of 644 participants was analyzed across six cognitive domains, taking into account individual demographics and neighborhood characteristics.
Hypersegregation, driven in part by historical redlining and contemporary racial discrimination in housing and lending, introduces instability in ratio indices like MDIR, particularly in census tracts with extreme racial imbalances. To address this, we employed a joint modeling approach that simultaneously estimates cognitive outcomes and latent mortgage rates for Black and White households, effectively mitigating measurement error. This method identified a significant association between MDIR and processing speed only among Non-Hispanic Black participants, with a one-unit MDIR increase corresponding to a 0.48 standard deviation (SD) improvement in processing speed (95% CI: 0.05-0.93 SD). That is, a more equitable mortgage lending environment is associated with faster cognitive processing. Traditional regression methods, in contrast, failed to detect such effects.
Simulations further demonstrated the advantages of joint modeling in managing measurement error, showing notably lower bias and greater robustness in small- to moderate- sized census tracts compared to traditional regression approaches. These findings underscore the importance of advanced statistical methods in quantifying structural racism and highlight the disproportionate effects of mortgages discrimination on cognitive outcomes among Black adults.