Social Vulnerability Hot Spots in Boston
There are twelve social determinants of vulnerability that negatively impact mitigation against, response to, and recovery from emergencies in the City of Boston. These social factors have two key characteristics. First, they have been validated by a link analysis of social factors in the literature as being associated with many other social factors. Second, they are all related to social isolation and many of them are also related to one another. Click on any image to see the larger version.
Eight attributes explained social isolation the best: people with disabilities, children, older adults, low-to-no income, less than high school education, people of color, women, and renters. Further, people with limited English proficiency were highly correlated with all eight social factors.
Social isolation has been validated as being driven by social vulnerability via link analysis based on the literature, correlation analysis (citywide and within neighborhoods), and regression analysis further solidifying the strong relationship between social isolation and social vulnerability. For this reason, social isolation was used as the primary social factor to examine vulnerability at the neighborhood level.
