A meta-analysis of social capital and health

Social capital generally refers to social relationships formed through reciprocal exchanges among members of social networks such as religious, political, and other kinds of organizations. There are significant theoretical and measurement differences within the literature and little evidence about the relationship between social capital and health or the causes and consequences of this relationship. Social capital's measures are poorly defined and are often used interchangeably which complicates our ability to effectively examine its impact on health status. This presentation reports on a meta-analysis of eligible studies assessing the bivariate association between social capital and two health indicators: self-reported health and all-cause mortality. A systematic review of the literature using “social capital”, “self-reported health”, and “mortality” as search terms yielded over 500 results. Thirty-nine studies met the inclusion criteria and were used to estimate an overall effect size. These results showed that social capital increases the odds of having good health by 27% (95% confidence intervals [CI] =21%, 34%). Of the social capital variables, reciprocity increased the odds of good health by 39% (95% CI = 21%, 60%), trust by 32% (95% CI =19%, 46%) and social support by 30%. These results indicate a need for social capital research to clearly define its constructs and measures to provide clearer evidence about the relationship between social capital and health and to begin exploring differences by race/ethnicity, gender and SES. Future research should identify micro- and macro-level factors associated with social capital and health to foster effective interventions in this promising area.