271482 Social capital and Health:A longitudinal analysis from the Korean Welfare Panel Study

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Gil-yong Kim , Graduate School of Public Health, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea
Byong-hee Cho, PhD , Graduate School of Public Health, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea
Jeong-Eun Park , Graduate School of Public Health, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea
The aim of this study was to explore the extent to which social capital in socioeconomically vulnerable populations predicted self-rated health and mental health, and to demonstrate contextual explanations and hypothesized pathways linking social capital to health. We used data from the Korean Welfare Panel Study with the same individuals (n=5,935) providing responses from 2006 to 2009. This study investigated the association between changes in health over time and individual level of social capital by four different items specific to general trust, social network, reciprocity and civic participations, measures of socioeconomic positions, social security benefits, social support and the confounders age and gender. Mental health indicator was annually assessed using the CES-D scale. Applying multilevel analyses, we estimated the cumulative effect between each social capital indicator and self-rated health and mental health after excluding individuals with any pre-existing disability and chronic disease at baseline. Low general trust appears to be an independent risk factor for physical and psychological health in Korea. Our results demonstrate that individual-level social capital variables matters for socioeconomically vulnerable people especially. Decrease in general trust could lead to an increasing trend of worse self-rated health and mental health after adjusting individual social security benefits and social support.

Learning Areas:
Epidemiology
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Public health administration or related administration
Public health or related public policy
Social and behavioral sciences

Learning Objectives:
1. Identify components of individual level proxies of social capital. 2. Analyze how social capital affected self-rated health and mental health. 3. Disscuss the contextual effect of social capital and its mechanisms.

Keywords: Social Inequalities, Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am very interested in this study and my doctoral thesis is related to social capital and health.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.