Social Trust and Health: a Perspective of Urban-Rural Comparison in China

Junfeng Jiang (), Qingqun Li (), Ru Kang () and Peigang Wang ()
Additional contact information
Junfeng Jiang: Wuhan University
Qingqun Li: Wuhan University
Ru Kang: Wuhan University
Peigang Wang: Wuhan University

Applied Research in Quality of Life, 2020, vol. 15, issue 3, No 8, 737-756

Abstract: Abstract In studies on social capital and health, trust is usually treated as a one-dimensional, rather than a multidimensional, conception. Based on the data from the Chinese General Social Survey of 2010, which included 3866 cases, this study examined the associations between four trust forms and two health outcomes through hierarchical linear models in urban versus rural China. Results showed that at the individual level, general trust was positively related to rural residents’ physical health and urban residents’ psychological health; institution trust was positively associated with psychological health in both urban and rural China but negatively related to urban residents’ physical health; weak-tie trust brought more psychological health for both urban and rural residents, but intimacy trust was only positively associated with the psychological health of urban residents. At the county level, general trust had a detrimental effect on rural residents’ physical health, whereas institution trust had a detrimental effect on urban residents’ psychological health. Living in a county with more weak-tie trust, individuals with less weak-tie trust were less likely to be healthy. Therefore, sufficient healthcare and education resources are needed to be supplied, especially in rural China, to exert the positive effect of various trust forms on health.

Keywords: General trust; Special trust; Physical & psychological health; Urban-rural comparison; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11482-018-9686-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:ariqol:v:15:y:2020:i:3:d:10.1007_s11482-018-9686-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11482

DOI: 10.1007/s11482-018-9686-0

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Research in Quality of Life is currently edited by Daniel Shek

More articles in Applied Research in Quality of Life from Springer, International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().