Explaining health-related inequalities with a social capital model

Abstract

In this study we used community health survey data to test an adapted version of Lin's (2001a, b) theoretical model for explaining health differences in terms of the differential generation of social capital. There was considerable support for the model's explanatory components with regard to differences in physical health. Variation in physical health was related to resources generated by education and avoidance of cost barriers in paying for care, embeddedness in the form of household composition, and accessibility of interpersonal health resources. However, life satisfaction differences were more related to employment experience and to being female than to health resources generation or utilization. Cost barriers had a considerable positive effect upon stress levels, as did being female. Overall, findings show that life orientations were largely independent of health-related resources, and that differences in stress reflected problems in paying for health care and gender-related experiences. The importance of gender in our results suggested the need for considering gender-specific models of the generation of health resources. The reciprocal relationship found between households' mobilization of provider services and their involvement in community health activities suggested the collateral generation of resources at the individual and community levels stressed by network theorists such as Burt (1992), Granovetter (1985), and Wellman (1983). Implications of our results for policy issues regarding inequalities in health and for the future study of health-related social capital are discussed.

Citation

Grimm, J.W. and Brewster, Z.W. (2002), "Explaining health-related inequalities with a social capital model", Jacobs Kronenfeld, J. (Ed.) Social Inequalities, Health and Health Care Delivery (Research in the Sociology of Health Care, Vol. 20), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 3-27. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0275-4959(02)80004-7