Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T15:52:07.377Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Social capital and self-reported general and mental health in nine Former Soviet Union countries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2013

Yevgeniy Goryakin ,
Marc Suhrcke ,
Lorenzo Rocco ,
Bayard Roberts  and
Martin McKee
Yevgeniy Goryakin*
Affiliation:
Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
Marc Suhrcke
Affiliation:
Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
Lorenzo Rocco
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Padua, Padua, Italy
Bayard Roberts
Affiliation:
European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition, Department of Health Services Research and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 5-17 Tavistock Place, London, WC1H 9SH, UK
Martin McKee
Affiliation:
European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition, Department of Health Services Research and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 5-17 Tavistock Place, London, WC1H 9SH, UK
*
*Correspondence to: Yevgeniy Goryakin, Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK. Email: y.goryakin@uea.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Social capital has been proposed as a potentially important contributor to health, yet most of the existing research tends to ignore the challenge of assessing causality in this relationship. We deal with this issue by employing various instrumental variable estimation techniques. We apply the analysis to a set of nine former Soviet countries, using a unique multi-country household survey specifically designed for this region. Our results confirm that there appears to be a causal association running from several dimensions of individual social capital to general and mental health. Individual trust appears to be more strongly related to general health, while social isolation- to mental health. In addition, social support and trust seem to be more important determinants of health than the social capital dimensions that facilitate solidarity and collective action. Our findings are remarkably robust to a range of different specifications, including the use of instrumental variables. Certain interaction effects are also found: for instance, untrusting people who live in communities with higher aggregate level of trust are even less likely to experience good health than untrusting people living in the reference communities.

Type
Articles
Information
Health Economics, Policy and Law , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , January 2014 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Almedom, A. M. (2005), ‘Social capital and mental health: an interdisciplinary review of primary evidence’, Social Science & Medicine, 61(5): 943–964.Google Scholar
Andreev, E. M., McKee, M.Shkolnikov, V. M. (2003), ‘Health expectancy in the Russian Federation: a new perspective on the health divide in Europe’, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 81(11): 778–787.Google Scholar
Borgonovi, F. (2010), ‘A life-cycle approach to the analysis of the relationship between social capital and health in Britain’, Social Science & Medicine, 71(11): 1927–1934.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (2002), ‘The Forms of Capital’, in N. W. Biggart (ed.), Readings in Economic Sociology, Wiley-Blackwell, 384pp.Google Scholar
Brown, T. T., Scheffler, R. M., Seo, S.Reed, M. (2006), ‘The empirical relationship between community social capital and the demand for cigarettes’, Health Economics, 15(11): 1159–1172.Google Scholar
Cockerham, W. C. (1999), Health and Social Change in Russia and Eastern Europe, New York, USA: Routledge.Google Scholar
Coleman, J. S. (1988), ‘Social capital in the creation of human capital’, American Journal of Sociology, 94: 95–120.Google Scholar
d'Hombres, B., Rocco, L., Suhrcke, M., Haerpfer, C.McKee, M. (2011), ‘The influence of social capital on health in eight former Soviet countries: why does it differ?’, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 65(1): 44–50.Google Scholar
d'Hombres, B., Rocco, L., Suhrcke, M.McKee, M. (2010), ‘Does social capital determine health? Evidence from eight transition countries’, Health Economics, 19(1): 56–74.Google Scholar
De Silva, M. J., McKenzie, K., Harpham, T.Huttly, S. R. A. (2005), ‘Social capital and mental illness: a systematic review’, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 59(8): 619–627.Google Scholar
Ellaway, A.Macintyre, S. (2001), ‘Women in their place. Gender and perceptions of neighbourhoods and health in the West of Scotland’, in I. Dyck, N. Davis Lewis and S. McLafferty (eds), Geographies of Women's Health, London: Routledge, 265–281.Google Scholar
Ferguson, K. M. (2004), ‘Measuring and indigenizing social capital in relation to children's street work in mexico: the role of culture in shaping social capital indicators’, Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, 31: 79–99.Google Scholar
Folland, S. (2007), ‘Does “community social capital” contribute to population health?’, Social Science & Medicine, 64(11): 2342–2354.Google Scholar
Giordano, G. N.Lindstrom, M. (2011), ‘Social capital and change in psychological health over time’, Social Science & Medicine, 72(8): 1219–1227.Google Scholar
Giordano, G. N.Lindström, M. (2011), ‘Social capital and change in psychological health over time’, Social Science & Medicine, 72(8): 1219–1227.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Habibov, N. N.Afandi, E. N. (2011), ‘Self-rated health and social capital in transitional countries: multilevel analysis of comparative surveys in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia’, Social Science & Medicine, 72(7): 1193–1204.Google Scholar
Henderson, S.Whiteford, H. (2003), ‘Social capital and mental health’, The Lancet, 362(9383): 505–506.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Islam, M. K., Merlo, J., Kawachi, I., Lindstrom, M., Burstrom, K.Gerdtham, U. G. (2006), ‘Does it really matter where you live? A panel data multilevel analysis of Swedish municipality-level social capital on individual health-related quality of life’, Health Economics, Policy and Law, 1(3): 209–235.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Iversen, T. (2008), ‘An exploratory study of associations between social capital and self-assessed health in Norway’, Health Economics, Policy and Law, 3(4): 349–364.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jacobs, J. (1961), The Life and Death of Great American Cities, New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Kawachi, I.Berkman, L. (2000), ‘Social cohesion, social capital, and health’, in Social Epidemiology. New York, USA: Oxford University Press, 174–190.Google Scholar
Kawachi, I., Kennedy, B. P.Glass, R. (1999), ‘Social capital and self-rated health: a contextual analysis’, American Journal of Public Health, 89(8): 1187–1192.Google Scholar
Kim, D., Baum, C. F., Ganz, M., Subramanian, S. V.Kawachi, I. (2011), ‘The contextual effects of social capital on health: a cross-national instrumental variable analysis’, Social Science & Medicine, 73: 1689–1697.Google Scholar
Lee, S. Y. D., Chen, W. L.Weiner, B. J. (2004), ‘Communities and hospitals: social capital, community accountability, and service provision in US community hospitals’, Health Services Research, 39(5): 1487–1508.Google Scholar
Loury, G. C. (1977), ‘A dynamic theory of racial income differences’, in P. A. Wallace and A. M. LaMonde (eds), Women, Minorities and Employment Discriminution, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 153–186.Google Scholar
McKenzie, K., Whitley, R.Weich, S. (2002), ‘Social capital and mental health’, The British Journal of Psychiatry, 181(4): 280–283.Google Scholar
Miller, D. L., Scheffler, R., Lam, S., Rosenberg, R.Rupp, A. (2006), ‘Social capital and health in Indonesia’, World Development, 34(6): 1084–1098.Google Scholar
Mitchell, C. U.LaGory, M. (2002), ‘Social capital and mental distress in an impoverished community’, City & Community, 1(2): 199–222.Google Scholar
Poortinga, W. (2006), ‘Social relations or social capital? Individual and community health effects of bonding social capital’, Social Science & Medicine, 63(1): 255–270.Google Scholar
Powell-Jackson, T., Basu, S., Balabanova, D., McKee, M.Stuckler, D. (2011), ‘Democracy and growth in divided societies: a health-inequality trap?’, Social Science & Medicine, 73(1): 33–41.Google Scholar
Putnam, R. (2000), Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Roberts, B., Abbott, P.McKee, M. (2010), ‘Levels and determinants of psychological distress in eight countries of the former Soviet Union’, Journal of Public Mental Health, 9(3): 17–26.Google Scholar
Rojas, Y.Carlson, P. (2006), ‘The stratification of social capital and its consequences for self-rated health in Taganrog, Russia’, Social Science & Medicine, 62(11): 2732–2741.Google Scholar
Ronconi, L., Brown, T. T.Scheffler, R. M. (2010), ‘Social capital and self-rated health in Argentina’, Health Economics 21(2): 201–208.Google Scholar
Rose, R. (2000), ‘How much does social capital add to individual health?: a survey study of Russians’, Social Science & Medicine, 51(9): 1421–1435.Google Scholar
Scheffler, R. M.Brown, T. T. (2008), ‘Social capital, economics, and health: new evidence’, Health Economics, Policy and Law, 3(4): 321–331.Google Scholar
Scheffler, R. M., Brown, T. T.Rice, J. K. (2007), ‘The role of social capital in reducing non-specific psychological distress: the importance of controlling for omitted variable bias’, Social Science & Medicine, 65(4): 842–854.Google Scholar
Scheffler, R. M., Brown, T. T., Syme, L., Kawachi, I., Tolstykh, I.Iribarren, C. (2008), ‘Community-level social capital and recurrence of acute coronary syndrome’, Social Science & Medicine, 66(7): 1603–1613.Google Scholar
Sirven, N., Debrand, T. 2011. ‘Social Capital and Health of Older Europeans’. Working Papers.Google Scholar
Snelgrove, J. W., Pikhart, H.Stafford, M. (2009), ‘A multilevel analysis of social capital and self-rated health: evidence from the British Household Panel Survey’, Social Science & Medicine, 68(11): 1993–2001.Google Scholar
Subramanian, S. V., Kim, D. J.Kawachi, I. (2002), ‘Social trust and self-rated health in US communities: a multilevel analysis’, Journal of Urban Health, 79: 21–34.Google Scholar
Suhrcke, M., Rocco, M., McKee, M., Mazzuco, S., Urban, D.Steinherr, A. (2007), Economic Consequences of Noncommunicable Diseases and Injuries in the Russian Federation, Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe.Google Scholar