Social capital and health – purely a question of context?

Summary

Debate still surrounds which level of analysis (individual vs. contextual) is most appropriate to investigate the effects of social capital on health. Applying multilevel econometric analyses to British Household Panel Survey data, we estimated fixed and random effects between five individual-, household- and small area-level social capital indicators and general health. We further compared the variance in health attributable to each level using intraclass correlations. Our results demonstrate that association between social capital and health depends on indicator type and level investigated, with one quarter of total individual-level health variance found at the household-level. However, individual-level social capital variables and other health determinants appear to influence contextual-level variance the most.