IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v60y2005i6p1267-1283.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social capital, geography and health: a small-area analysis for England

Author

Listed:
  • Mohan, John
  • Twigg, Liz
  • Barnard, Steve
  • Jones, Kelvyn

Abstract

There has recently been much debate about the influence of social capital on health outcomes. In particular it has been suggested that levels of social capital vary from place to place and that such variations may account for previously unexplained between-place variations in health outcomes. As yet few studies exist of the influence of small-area variations in social capital on health outcomes. One reason for this is the difficulty of obtaining indicators for small areas such as electoral wards in England, and we describe a method used to derive what we term 'synthetic estimates' of aspects of social capital by linking coefficients produced from multi-level analyses of national survey datasets to census data. We produce estimates for electoral wards in England and apply these in multi-level models of our response variable, the probability of survival of individuals surveyed in the Health and Lifestyle Survey of England. We report various combinations of models incorporating individual attributes, health-related behaviours, area measures of deprivation, and area measures of social capital. Our overall conclusion is that we find little support, at this spatial scale, for the proposition that area measures of social capital exert a beneficial effect on health outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Mohan, John & Twigg, Liz & Barnard, Steve & Jones, Kelvyn, 2005. "Social capital, geography and health: a small-area analysis for England," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(6), pages 1267-1283, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:60:y:2005:i:6:p:1267-1283
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(04)00336-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hall, Peter A., 1999. "Social Capital in Britain," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 29(3), pages 417-461, June.
    2. 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.
    3. Blakely, T.A. & Kennedy, B.P. & Kawachi, I., 2001. "Socioeconomic inequality in voting participation and self-rated health," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 91(1), pages 99-104.
    4. Foley, Michael W. & Edwards, Bob, 1999. "Is It Time to Disinvest in Social Capital?," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(2), pages 141-173, May.
    5. Gunnar L.H Svendsen & Gert T. Svendsen, 2004. "The Creation and Destruction of Social Capital," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 3276.
    6. William Maloney & Graham Smith & Gerry Stoker, 2000. "Social Capital and Urban Governance: Adding a More Contextualized ‘Top‐down’ Perspective," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 48(4), pages 802-820, September.
    7. 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.
    8. Kawachi, I. & Kennedy, B.P. & Lochner, K. & Prothrow-Stith, D., 1997. "Social capital, income inequality, and mortality," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 87(9), pages 1491-1498.
    9. Grootaert Grootaert & Deepa Narayan & Veronica Nyhan Jones & Michael Woolcock, 2004. "Measuring Social Capital : An Integrated Questionnaire," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 15033, December.
    10. 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.
    11. Kennedy, Bruce P. & Kawachi, Ichiro & Brainerd, Elizabeth, 1998. "The role of social capital in the Russian mortality crisis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 26(11), pages 2029-2043, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Brune, Nancy E. & Bossert, Thomas, 2009. "Building social capital in post-conflict communities: Evidence from Nicaragua," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(5), pages 885-893, March.
    2. Shortt, S. E. D., 2004. "Making sense of social capital, health and policy," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 11-22, October.
    3. Riumallo-Herl, Carlos Javier & Kawachi, Ichiro & Avendano, Mauricio, 2014. "Social capital, mental health and biomarkers in Chile: Assessing the effects of social capital in a middle-income country," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 47-58.
    4. Engström, Karin & Mattsson, Fredrik & Järleborg, Anders & Hallqvist, Johan, 2008. "Contextual social capital as a risk factor for poor self-rated health: A multilevel analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(11), pages 2268-2280, June.
    5. Marino, Francesca & Nunziata, Luca, 2022. "Radioactive decay, health and social capital: Lessons from the Chernobyl experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 315-340.
    6. 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.
    7. Fiorillo, Damiano & Sabatini, Fabio, 2015. "Structural social capital and health in Italy," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 17(C), pages 129-142.
    8. Semaan, Salaam & Sternberg, Maya & Zaidi, Akbar & Aral, Sevgi O., 2007. "Social capital and rates of gonorrhea and syphilis in the United States: Spatial regression analyses of state-level associations," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(11), pages 2324-2341, June.
    9. Diego Zavaleta & Kim Samuel & China T. Mills, 2017. "Measures of Social Isolation," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 131(1), pages 367-391, March.
    10. Poortinga, Wouter, 2006. "Social relations or social capital? Individual and community health effects of bonding social capital," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 255-270, July.
    11. Boneham, Margaret Anne & Sixsmith, Judith A, 2006. "The voices of older women in a disadvantaged community: Issues of health and social capital," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 269-279, January.
    12. Jennifer M. Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo, 2003. "State Social Capital and Individual Health Status," Working Papers 0310, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
    13. Folland, Sherman, 2007. "Does "community social capital" contribute to population health?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(11), pages 2342-2354, June.
    14. Stavros Petrou & Emil Kupek, 2008. "Social capital and its relationship with measures of health status: evidence from the Health Survey for England 2003," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(1), pages 127-143, January.
    15. Seth Feinberg, 2009. "Preventable Mortality as a Predictor of Community Social Organisation: Examining Reverse Causality," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 46(9), pages 1829-1858, August.
    16. Rhys Andrews, 2007. "Civic Culture and Public Service Failure: An Empirical Exploration," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 44(4), pages 845-863, April.
    17. Wilkinson, Richard G & Pickett, Kate E., 2006. "Income inequality and population health: A review and explanation of the evidence," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(7), pages 1768-1784, April.
    18. Zheng, Hui, 2009. "Rising U.S. income inequality, gender and individual self-rated health, 1972-2004," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(9), pages 1333-1342, November.
    19. Khawaja, Marwan & Abdulrahim, Sawsan & Soweid, Rima A.Afifi. & Karam, Dima, 2006. "Distrust, social fragmentation and adolescents' health in the outer city: Beirut and beyond," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(5), pages 1304-1315, September.
    20. Maria Felice Arezzo & Cristina Giudici, 2017. "Social Capital and Self Perceived Health Among European Older Adults," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 130(2), pages 665-685, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:60:y:2005:i:6:p:1267-1283. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.