Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

State Social Capital and Individual Health Status

Contents:

Author Info

  • Jennifer M. Mellor

    () (Department of Economics, College of William and Mary)

  • Jeffrey Milyo

    () (Department of Economics and Truman School of Public Affairs, 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.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://economics.wm.edu/wp/cwm_wp5.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Department of Economics, College of William and Mary in its series Working Papers with number 05.

as in new window
Length: 39 pages
Date of creation: 15 Sep 2004
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:cwm:wpaper:5

Contact details of provider:
Postal: P.O. Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795
Phone: (757) 221-4311
Fax: (757) 221-2390
Web page: http://www.wm.edu/economics/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: health status; social capital;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Jennifer M. Mellor & Jeffrey D. Milyo, 2001. "Income inequality and health," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(1), pages 151-155.
  2. Scheinkman, Jose A. & Soutter, Christine L. & Glaeser, Edward Ludwig & Laibson, David I., 2000. "Measuring Trust," Scholarly Articles 4481497, Harvard University Department of Economics.
  3. Timothy Waidmann & John Bound & Michael Schoenbaum, 1995. "The Illusion of Failure: Trends in the Self-Reported Health of the U.S. Elderly," NBER Working Papers 5017, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Dora L. Costa & Matthew E. Kahn, 2003. "Cowards And Heroes: Group Loyalty In The American Civil War," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 118(2), pages 519-548, May.
  5. Alberto Alesina & Eliana La Ferrara, 1999. "Participation in Heterogeneous Communities," NBER Working Papers 7155, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Jennifer M. Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo, 2002. "Individual Health Status and Minority Racial Concentration in U.S. States and Counties," Working Papers 0201, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
  7. Lomas, Jonathan, 1998. "Social capital and health: Implications for public health and epidemiology," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 47(9), pages 1181-1188, November.
  8. Butler, J S, et al, 1987. "Measurement Error in Self-reported Health Variables," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 69(4), pages 644-50, November.
  9. Veenstra, Gerry, 2000. "Social capital, SES and health: an individual-level analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 619-629, March.
  10. Lisa Anderson & Jennifer Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo, 2004. "Social Capital and Contributions in a Public Goods Experiment," Working Papers 0317, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
  11. Jeffrey Milyo & Ira Parnerkar, 2003. "Income Inequality, Social Capital and Mortality: Re-examining the State-Level Data," Working Papers 0309, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
  12. Alesina, Alberto F & La Ferrara, Eliana, 2000. "Who Trusts Others?," CEPR Discussion Papers 2646, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  13. Kawachi, Ichiro & Kennedy, Bruce P. & Wilkinson, Richard G., 1999. "Crime: social disorganization and relative deprivation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 48(6), pages 719-731, March.
  14. Jeffrey Milyo & Jennifer M. Mellor, 2002. "On the Importance of Full versus Partial Age-Adjustment in Ecological Studies of Social Determinants of Mortality," Working Papers 0207, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
  15. Ahern, Melissa M. & Hendryx, Michael S., 2003. "Social capital and trust in providers," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 57(7), pages 1195-1203, October.
  16. Lochner, Kimberly A. & Kawachi, Ichiro & Brennan, Robert T. & Buka, Stephen L., 2003. "Social capital and neighborhood mortality rates in Chicago," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 56(8), pages 1797-1805, April.
  17. Lisa R. Anderson & Jennifer M. Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo, 2003. "Inequality, Group Cohesion, and Public Good Provision: An Experimental Analysis," Working Papers 0308, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
  18. La Ferrara, Eliana & Alesina, Alberto, 2000. "Participation in Heterogeneous Communities," Scholarly Articles 4551796, Harvard University Department of Economics.
  19. Edmondson, Ricca, 2003. "Social capital: a strategy for enhancing health?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 57(9), pages 1723-1733, November.
  20. Galea, Sandro & Karpati, Adam & Kennedy, Bruce, 2002. "Social capital and violence in the United States, 1974-1993," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 55(8), pages 1373-1383, October.
  21. Kennelly, Brendan & O'Shea, Eamon & Garvey, Eoghan, 2003. "Social capital, life expectancy and mortality: a cross-national examination," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 56(12), pages 2367-2377, June.
  22. Knack, Stephen, 2000. "Social capital and the quality of Government : evidence from the U.S. States," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2504, The World Bank.
  23. Knack, Stephen & Keefer, Philip, 1997. "Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 112(4), pages 1251-88, November.
  24. Subramanian, S. V. & Kawachi, Ichiro & Kennedy, Bruce P., 2001. "Does the state you live in make a difference? Multilevel analysis of self-rated health in the US," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 9-19, July.
  25. van Doorslaer, Eddy & Wagstaff, Adam & Bleichrodt, Han & Calonge, Samuel & Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Gerfin, Michael & Geurts, Jose & Gross, Lorna & Hakkinen, Unto & Leu, Robert E., 1997. "Income-related inequalities in health: some international comparisons," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 93-112, February.
  26. Kennedy, Bruce P. & Kawachi, Ichiro & Prothrow-Stith, Deborah & Lochner, Kimberly & Gupta, Vanita, 1998. "Social capital, income inequality, and firearm violent crime," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 7-17, July.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Lisa R. Anderson & Jennifer M. Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo, 2003. "Inequality, Group Cohesion, and Public Good Provision: An Experimental Analysis," Working Papers 0308, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
  2. Folland, Sherman & Islam, Muhammad Quamrul & Kaarbøe, Oddvar Martin, 2012. "The Social Capital and Health Hypothesis: A Theory and New Empirics Featuring the Norwegian HUNT Data," Working Papers in Economics 04/12, University of Bergen, Department of Economics.
  3. Islam, M. Kamrul & Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Gullberg, Bo & Lindström, Martin & Merlo, Juan, 2008. "Social capital externalities and mortality in Sweden," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 19-42, March.
  4. Cristina Blanco Pérez & Xavier Ramos, 2010. "Polarization And Health," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 56(1), pages 171-185, 03.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cwm:wpaper:5

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Daifeng He) or (Alfredo Pereira).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.