The association between higher levels of economic resources and more optimal health is one of the most well-documented relationships in public health research (Susser and Watson and Hopper 1985; Krieger et al. 1993; Lynch and Kaplan 2000), and economic aspects of local areas have been among the most frequently analyzed contextual factors with regard to mortality and other outcomes. Significant associations have been shown between health status and community economic characteristics including income (Anderson et al. 1997; Diez Roux et al. 1997) and inequality in income distribution (Lynch et al. 1998; Kennedy et al. 1998), wealth (Diez Roux et al. 1997; O'Campo et al. 1997), poverty (Yen and Kaplan 1999; Shaw et al. 2000), and the geographic concentration of poverty (Waitzman and Smith 1998a, b)