Social support: a diverse, multilevel, unequal resource

Christine A. Mair

Chapter 16 in Handbook on Inequality and Social Capital, 2024, pp 240-255 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Social support is one of the most fundamental and valuable resources in any society and promotes mental and physical health across the globe. Scholarship on this topic remains broadly scattered across multiple academic disciplines, concepts, and measures that can be clustered under structural, functional, and quality perspectives. Processes of social support also operate at multiple levels of society, including through individuals, dyads, families, neighborhoods, communities, and countries. Yet, social support is not equally available to all members of society and lack of social support confounds existing inequities at multiple levels. Addressing these inequities requires a thoughtful consideration of the remaining challenges to studying and promoting social support. Finally, as societies age and individualize, social support scholars may be able to help generate practical ideas to promote and better equalize social support availability. In conclusion, although social support is currently a privilege, it should perhaps be reframed as a societal priority.

Keywords: Sociology and Social Policy; Sustainable Development Goals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781802202373.00024 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

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:elg:eechap:21002_16

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().