State Social Capital and Individual Health Status

Jeffrey Milyo and Jennifer Mellor ()

No 419, Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Missouri

Abstract: Recent studies have found that two state-level measures of social capital, average levels of civic participation and trust, are associated with improvements in individual health status. In this study we employ these measures, together with the Putnam (2000) index, to examine several key aspects of the relationship between state social capital and individual health. We find that for all three measures, the association with health status persists after carefully adjusting for household income, and that for two measures, mistrust and the Putnam index, the size of this association warrants further attention. Using the Putnam index, we find particular support for the hypothesis that social capital has a more pronounced salutary effect for the poor. Our findings generate both support for the social capital and health hypothesis and a number of implications for future research.

Keywords: Social Capital; Health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pgs.
Date: 2004-12-27
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 2005

Downloads: (external link)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1agrcEkY1LC6PvZKSE ... 6rH/view?usp=sharing (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: State Social Capital and Individual Health Status (2004)
Working Paper: State Social Capital and Individual Health Status (2003)
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:umc:wpaper:0419

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Missouri Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chao Gu ().