Page - 107 - in Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change

107 gender. For males, the benefit of green space emerged in early adulthood, while no association was identified for women until later in life. Finally, Nichani et  al. (2017) did not identify any associations between green space and depression in pregnant women. Relatively consistent results show that urban green space has some positive effect on mental health in most age groups, in particular for children, but also for different deprived groups. The effect mostly remained even after controlling for socio-economic confounders such as SES, area deprivation, household income or educational status. 5.3.2 Birth Outcome Abelt and McLafferty (2017) found no consistent significant relationship between birth outcomes and residential greenness. They did, however, identify an inverse relationship between street-level vegetation (street trees) and odds of preterm birth, which remained after controlling for the mother’s socio-economic status. Adverse birth outcomes, such as preterm birth or low birth weight, were generally higher among women residing in deprived areas. These deprived areas were less green and had lower numbers of street trees. Similar inconsistencies in results were identified by Cusack et  al. (2017). They could not show significant associations between green space and birth weight in full models that take confounders such as ethnicity into account. They did, however, find some consistent associations for the high density urban areas and green space measured at small buffer distances. Adjusted models showed that parents’ race/ethnicity had the strongest influence on model predic- tions, whereas the inclusion of environmental confounders such as NO2 and air pollution had no effect on the NDVI and birth-weight association (see also Dadvand et  al. Chap. 6, this volume). Kihal-Talantikite et  al. (2013) also included deprivation as a confounding variable to greenness, and showed that there was no difference in the results for infant mortality. Nevertheless, infant mortality rates were not ran- domly distributed over the study area, showing that both greenness and deprivation may have an impact. Padilla et  al. (2016) could not identify a significant association between neonatal mortality and urban green-space exposure. Kihal-Talantikite et  al. (2013) and Padilla et  al. (2016) found a significant association between neonatal mortality risk and level of deprivation. Clearly, there is a major link between socio-economic status or deprivation and birth outcomes. Only some studies could show a relationship with urban green space. 5 The Influence of  Socio-economic and  Socio-demographic Factors in  the  Association…