This is interesting. But it's also true that the effect of social capital on
health depends on (1) how social capital is conceived & measured; (2) the level
of analysis.

At the individual level, it is fairly well established that having some close
friends or family members is good for health (recall Wilkinson's advice).
Social support is particularly beneficial in times of stress, when diagnosed
with a serious illness, when recovering from surgery, etc. Some might argue
that social support is not the same as social capital. Others see it as a type
of social capital.

At a more structural level, Rob Sampson (chair of my department) and Jeff
Morenoff have some interesting research showing how "collective efficacy"
partly mediates the effects of poverty and inequality on health. For example,
in a neighbourhood setting, collective efficacy is the shared belief that you
and your neighbours could come together and help each other out in times of
crisis (e.g., if the city wants to build a highway through your neighbourhood
and you and your neighbours don't want that, could you come together and stop
it?). Perhaps not surprisingly, higher income communities have higher levels of
collective efficacy, and this partly explains why these communities have less
street crime and better health. Conversely, poverty and deprivation tend to
harm the collective efficacy of a community, making it more vulnerable to
things like violent crime (not necessarily perpetrated by people who live in
that community). Granted, a poor community's lack of collective efficacy is
often due to a realistic assessment of the barriers it faces.

But, here's the trick: poor communities with higher collective efficacy have
lower crime and better health than poor communities with lower collective
efficacy (but the former still don't fare as well as rich communities). One
implication might be that by building strong communities with lots of trust and
social support, you can create the conditions for people to come together and
demand better access to material resources, public services, etc. Eventually,
if all goes well, resources will be more evenly distributed to these
communities, and they will benefit from BOTH higher collective efficacy and
better material conditions.

To be clear, I think material conditions are by far the most important social
determinant of health. But one of the ways they improve or harm people's health
is by raising or lowering their levels of social capital. Conversely, social
capital can be mobilized to seek broader structural changes and improve health
- and I see people like Dennis Raphael, Chrystal Ocean, and several others on
this list doing just that. :-)

A few useful references (a google search will reveal more):

Israel, Barbara A; et al. 2002. "The relationship between social support,
stress, and health among women on Detroit's East Side." Health Educ Behav
29(3): 342-60.

Uchino, Bert. 2005. Social Support and Physical Health: Understanding the Health
Consequences of Relationships. New Haven: Yale U Press.

Kawachi, I, BP Kennedy, K Lochner and D Prothrow-Stith. 1997. "Social capital,
income inequality, and mortality." American Journal of Public Health 87(9):
1491-1498.

Morenoff, Jeffrey. 2003. "Neighborhood mechanisms and the spatial dynamics of
birth weight." American Journal of Sociology, 108 (5): 976-1017.

Sampson, Robert J., Stephen Raudenbush, and Felton Earls. 1997. "Neighborhoods
and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy." Science 277:
918-24.

(I think all these studies were conducted in the US. But there is evidence that
many of the same processes also occur elsewhere - for example, Sampson's
collective efficacy model holds up in Sweden and Indonesia).

Best,

Jeff


--
Jeff Denis
PhD Student
Department of Sociology
Harvard University

"The principle of organizing our society for the benefit of all the people and
not for a privileged few - that is still here and that is a principle to which
we adhere." - Tommy C. Douglas



Quoting Dennis Raphael <[log in to unmask]>:

> "Social Capital" vs. "Neomaterialist" Interpretations of Health
> Inequalities
>
> Christine Lindström and Martin Lindström
>
> The effects of social capital, income inequality, and absolute per capita
> income were investigated in an ecological analysis of 23 rich and poor
> countries. Trust was chosen as an indicator of social capital, and GNP
> (gross
> national product) per capita and Gini index measured absolute and relative
> income, respectively. These independent variables were analyzed in a
> linear
> regression model with the dependent variables adult mortality rate (25-64
> years), life expectancy, and infant mortality rate (IMR). Separate
> analyses
> were performed for poor and rich countries as well as all countries
> combined.
> Social capital (trust) showed no significant association with the three
> health
> outcomes. A particularly strong relationship was found between Gini index
> and IMR for rich countries, and GNP per capita and life expectancy for all
> countries. In the group of poor countries, GNP per capita and Gini index
> in the
> same model were associated with IMR.
>
> The results contradict the suggested impact of social capital on health,
> and
> instead support the notion that economic factors such as absolute income
> and
> relative income distribution are of importance.
>
> International Journal of Health Services, Volume 36, Number 4, Pages
> 679-696, 2006
>
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