A Multilevel Perspective on the Health Effect of Social Capital: Evidence for the Relative Importance of Individual Social Capital over Neighborhood Social Capital

Susan Lagaert, Thom Snaphaan, Veerle Vyncke, Wim Hardyns, Lieven J. R. Pauwels and Sara Willems
Additional contact information
Susan Lagaert: Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
Thom Snaphaan: Department of Criminology, Criminal Law and Social Law, Faculty of Law and Criminology, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
Veerle Vyncke: Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
Wim Hardyns: Department of Criminology, Criminal Law and Social Law, Faculty of Law and Criminology, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
Lieven J. R. Pauwels: Department of Criminology, Criminal Law and Social Law, Faculty of Law and Criminology, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
Sara Willems: Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 4, 1-21

Abstract: Employing a multilevel perspective on the health effects of social capital, this study analyzes how individual and neighborhood differences in self-rated health in Ghent (Belgium), relate to individual and collective social mechanisms, when taking demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of individuals into account. This study estimates the health effects of social trust, informal social control and disorder at the neighborhood level and social support and network size at the individual level, using indicators indebted to both the normative and resource-based approaches to social capital. Instead of the mere aggregation of individual indicators of social capital, this study uses the key informant technique as a methodologically superior measurement of neighborhood social capital, which combined with a multilevel analysis strategy, allows to disentangle the health effects of individual and neighborhood social capital. The analysis highlights the health benefits of individual social capital, i.e., individual social support and network size. The study indicates that controlling for individual demographic and socioeconomic characteristics reduces the effect of the neighborhood-level counterparts and the neighborhood characteristics social trust and neighborhood disorder have significant, but small health effects. In its effects on self-rated health, social capital operates on the individual level, rather than the neighborhood level.

Keywords: health status disparities; social capital; social determinants; neighborhoods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/4/1526/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/4/1526/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:4:p:1526-:d:494178

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().