Chapter 8: Social Capital and Health in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

This chapter has three objectives. First, we set a series of questions related to the trio of social capital, health, and economic development to determine whether the positive correlation between social capital and health that has been observed in high-income countries also holds in low- and middle-income countries. We also address whether different forms of social capital (e.g., informal interactions, participation in organizations, trust) have different effects on health, depending on the level of economic development and whether the mechanisms driving the correlation between social capital and health differ in richer and poorer countries. Second, we review the econometric literature of social capital and health in developing countries. The evidence suggests that social capital is positively correlated with health in developing countries, but coefficients are not strictly comparable with those for developed countries because of differences in data, measures, and methodologies. Third, we compute and compare the correlations for a number of developing and developed countries using a homogenous international dataset (i.e., the International Social Survey Programme, or ISSP), which, to our knowledge, has not been used for this type of study before. We also use a local household survey to present results for more and less developed regions of Argentina, a country in which there is significant heterogeneity of income across provinces. Overall, we find that correlations between participation in organizations and health are usually of similar magnitude across richer and poorer countries (or regions), but trust has a larger positive association with health in more developed countries. We conclude by pointing out directions for further research.