Healthy Local Economies Make Residents Healthy, Too

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Living in communities with thriving small businesses is good for your health, new research shows.

Counties with a greater concentration of small, locally owned businesses have healthier populations — with lower rates of mortality, obesity and diabetes— than those that rely on large companies for industry, according to a study by sociologists at Louisiana State University (LSU) and Baylor University. 

"We often think of the economic benefits and job growth that small business generates, but we don't think of the social benefits to small communities," said Troy Blanchard, lead author of the study and an associate professor of sociology at LSU.

Small businesses are more likely to push for local anti-smoking legislation, support local farmers' markets, promote community health programs and activities, recruit physicians and support the development of health infrastructures, according to the study.

"In addition to job creation, small businesses yield important, noneconomic rewards to communities that may improve the health of local residents," Blanchard said. 

The findings are a departure from previous beliefs that communities with larger, big-box retailers fared better.

While higher pay and better benefits historically have been larger business' key attraction, the study revealed the gap between what large and small businesses are offering employees today isn't nearly as great as it was in the 1970s and 1980s.

The researchers pointed to a previous study that found larger companies showed a 33 percent drop in wages, and a substantial decrease in access to health insurance, between 1988 and 2003.

"The old way of thinking was that you wanted to work for a big company because of pension plans, health insurance, dental insurance," said co-author Carson Mencken, professor of sociology at Baylor. "But many of them have moved overseas to cheaper labor markets."

The study used data from 3,060 counties and parishes in the United States gathered as part of the 2000 Census of Population and Housing, the 2007 Centers for Disease Control Obesity and Diabetes Estimates, the National Center for Health Statistics Compressed Mortality records from 1994 to 2006, the 2002 County Business Patterns and the 2002 Nonemployer Statistics. It was published online in the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society and will appear in its March print issue.

This story was provided by BusinessNewsDaily, sister site to MyHealthNewsDaily.