Author
Listed:
- Michael Lebenbaum
- Claire de Oliveira
- France Gagnon
- Audrey Laporte
Abstract
Although studies have demonstrated important effects of poor health in childhood on stocks of human and health capital, little research has tested economic theories to investigate the effect of child health on social capital in adulthood. Studies on the influence of child health on adult social capital are mixed and have not used sibling fixed effects models to account for unmeasured family and genetic characteristics, that are likely to be important. Using the Add‐Health sample, health in childhood was assessed as self‐rated health, the occurrence of a physical health condition or mental health condition, while social capital in adulthood was measured as volunteering, religious service attendance, team sports participation, number of friends, social isolation, and social support. We used sibling fixed effects models, which attenuated several associations to non‐significance. In sibling fixed effects models there was significant positive effects of greater self‐rated health on participation in team sports and social support, and negative effect of mental health in childhood on social isolation in adulthood. These results suggest that children with poor health require additional supports to build and maintain their stock of social capital and highlight further potential benefits to efforts that address poor child health.
Suggested Citation
Michael Lebenbaum & Claire de Oliveira & France Gagnon & Audrey Laporte, 2024.
"Child health and its effect on adult social capital accumulation,"
Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(5), pages 844-869, May.
Handle:
RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:33:y:2024:i:5:p:844-869
DOI: 10.1002/hec.4792
Download full text from publisher
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:wly:hlthec:v:33:y:2024:i:5:p:844-869. 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.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/5749 .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.