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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: [email protected]
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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 

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