Social Capital and Health in Low and Middle-Income Countries

JOSE ANCHORENA; LUCAS RONCONI; SACHIKO OZAWA

The Economics of Social Capital and Health

World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Año: 2014; p. 1 - 219

The objective of this chapter is threefold. First, we set a series of questions related to the trio social capital-health-economic development. Does the positive correlation between social capital and health observed in high income countries also hold in low and middle income countries? Do different ?forms? of social capital (e.g., informal interactions, participation in organizations, trust) have different effects on health depending on the level of economic development? Are the mechanisms driving the correlation between social capital and health different across richer and poorer countries? Second, we review the econometric literature of social capital and health in developing countries. The evidence suggests that social capital is also positively correlated with health in developing countries, but coefficients are not strictly comparable with those for developed countries because of differences in data, measures and methodologies. Third, we compute and compare correlations for a number of developing and developed countries using a homogenous international dataset (i.e., the International Social Survey Programme ISSP), which, to our knowledge, has never been used for this type of study. We also present some results for more and less developed regions of Argentina, a country where heterogeneity of income across provinces is large using a local household survey. Overall, we find that correlations between participation in organizations and health are usually of similar magnitude across richer and poorer countries (or regions), but trust has a larger positive association with health in more developed countries. We conclude by pointing out directions for further research.