Relationship between access to green space and health
About 2 mins
Key points
- On average, neighbourhoods with greater access to green space tend to have higher life expectancy.
The relationship between an area’s health and green space is complex. On one hand, access to green space can bring physical and mental health benefits. Green spaces provide opportunities to exercise, and spending time in nature can relieve stress. Additionally, green spaces reduce air and noise pollution, and reduce the ‘heat island effect’ (the higher temperatures of built-up areas compared to their rural surroundings) in urban places. They also provide opportunities to meet and socialise, helping people to get together and build relationships and networks.
At the same time, people living in areas with less access to green space are more likely to be in poor health, as access to green space is lower in more deprived areas, and deprivation is itself strongly associated with poor health.
This chart shows the relationship between access to green space (or green space deprivation) and health, as measured by life expectancy.
- Neighbourhoods with greater access to green space tend to have higher life expectancy.
- Men’s life expectancy in neighbourhoods with the highest access to green space is 81.2, compared with 78.2 in neighbourhoods with the lowest.
- Women’s life expectancy in neighbourhoods with the highest access to green space is 84.7, compared with 82.8 in neighbourhoods with the lowest access.
Access to green space is just one of many neighbourhood-specific characteristics that affect health. Availability and affordability of healthy food, levels of crime and air pollution are some of the others. As with access to green space, the relationship between these factors and health is affected by wider higher-level neighbourhood factors such as income levels, housing and education, some of which can be captured by the composite measure of deprivation.
- Green space is defined as private gardens, public green space and ‘open access land’ (such as heathland, woodland, moors and other common land).
- The green space deprivation score is estimated by taking into account the amount of green space available in a specific area (both private gardens and public green space) and the distance that residents in the area have to travel to reach it.
- Neighbourhoods are defined as Middle layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs), based on 2011 Census areas. MSOAs are geographical areas that comprise 2,000–6,000 households (5,000–15,000 people).
- The analysis is restricted to MSOAs in England only, due to data availability.
- Life expectancy is defined as the number of years a person of a specific age in a specific area in a specific time period can be expected to live, if mortality rates for that area and time period remain constant. Life expectancy for MSOAs is calculated for a period of five consecutive years, due to the small population numbers in those areas and in order to reduce the effect that seasonal events (such as the flu) might have on the number of people dying.
Data source: Health Foundation analysis of Friends of the Earth, Green Space Consolidated data v2.1, England, 2020; Office for National Statistics, Life Expectancy at Birth for Middle layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs), England, 2016–20
