Social capital and health at the country level

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Social capital and health at the country level Sanghoon Lee Department of Economics, Hannam University, 70 Hannamro, Daedeokgu, Daejeon 34430, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 23 July 2017 Received in revised form 7 November 2017 Accepted 29 November 2017 Available online xxx Keywords: Social capital Health Bonding social capital Bridging social capital

a b s t r a c t This study examines the relationship between social capital and health. We use various estimation methods such as pooled OLS, a split-sample approach, a quadratic regression, and fixed effects model to investigate country-level unbalanced panel data of 194 countries for the time period 1990–2015. The results support the negative effect of bonding social capital and the positive effect of bridging social capital on health. The effects are more pronounced in low income countries. The first contribution of the paper is to better explain the mixed results of previous studies by focusing on the distinction between the two types of social capital. The second contribution of the paper is to address endogeneity and nonlinearity problems and to capture dynamic change by using various econometric methods. The findings imply that the socio-economic effects of social capital are different depending on the type of social capital. © 2017 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction This paper examines the relationship between social capital and health. Social capital is often defined as “resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition—or in other words, to membership in a group—which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectivity-owned capital, a ‘credential’ which entitles them to credit (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 248),” and “social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them (Putnam, 2000, p. 19).” Scholars commonly identify two important concepts in social capital: social networks and trust (or norms of reciprocity) (Woolcock, 1998, p. 153). Accordingly, in this study, social capital refers to trust within and across social networks. Interest in the association between social capital and health has emerged in late 1990s and early 2000s, when

there was debate on the relationship between socioeconomic status and health inequalities. Social capital has been identified as a possible mediating variable in the relationship between income inequality and health (for review, see Harpham, Grant, & Thomas, 2002; Hawe & Shiell, 2000; Macinko & Starfield, 2001; McKenzie, Whitley, & Weich, 2002). Szreter and Woolcock (2004) explain three perspectives on the health effect of social capital: (i) a social support perspective holds that informal networks are central to welfare; (ii) an inequality perspective argues that economic inequalities erode citizens’ sense of social justice and inclusion, which in turn gives rise to anxiety and limits life expectancy; and (iii) a political economy perspective claims that the socially and politically mediated exclusion from material resources leads to poor health. Recent studies extend the social capital research from residential areas into workplaces (Oksanen, Suzuki, Takao, Vahtera, & Kivimäki, 2013). Many studies have been conducted to evaluate the hypothesis of the effect of social capital on health (for review, see Carlson & Chamberlain, 2003; Muntaner, Lynch, & Smith, 2001). Self-reported trust and self-rated health

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2 Table 1 Previous studies of trust and health.

Kawachi, Kennedy, and Glass (1999) Rose (2000) Veenstra (2000) Hyyppä and Mäki (2001) Knesebeck, Dragano, and Siegrist (2005) Mellor and Milyo (2005) Kim, Subramanian, and Kawachi (2006) Poortinga (2006a) Poortinga (2006b) Rostila (2007) Yip et al. (2007) Fujiwara and Kawachi (2008b) Mansyur, Amick, Harrist, and Franzini (2008) Petrou and Kupek (2008) Schultz, O’Brien, and Tadesse (2008) Yamaoka (2008) Ichida et al. (2009) Snelgrove, Pikhart, and Stafford (2009) Wang, Schlesinger, Wang, and Hsiao (2009) Borges, Campos, Vargas, Ferreira, and Kawachi (2010) Borgonovi (2010) d’Hombres, Rocco, Suhrcke, and McKee (2010) Giordano and Lindström (2010) Lindén-Bostöm, Persson, and Eriksson (2010) Suzuki et al. (2010) Cramm and Nieboer (2011) Elgar et al. (2011) Giordano, Ohlsson, and Lindström (2011) Hurtado, Kawachi, and Sudarsky (2011) Moore et al. (2011) Yiengprugsawan, Khamman, ang Seubsman, Lim, and Sleigh (2011) Giordano, Björk, and Lindström (2012) Rocco and Suhrcke (2012) Verhaeghe and Tampubolon (2012) Chola and Alaba (2013) Nyqvist and Nygård (2013) Tampubolon, Subramanian, and Kawachi (2013) Carpiano and Fitterer (2014) Goryakin, Suhrcke, Rocco, Roberts, and McKee (2014) Herian, Tay, Hamm, and Diener (2014) Miyamoto, Iwakuma, and Nakayama (2014) Riumallo-Herl, Kawachi, and Avendano (2014) Rocco, Fumagalli, and Suhrcke (2014) Koutsogeorgou et al. (2015) Campos-Matos, Subramanian, and Kawachi (2016)

Country

Period

Result

US Russia Canada Finland Europe US US Europe UK Europe China US 45 countries UK US East Asia Japan UK China Brazil UK former Soviets UK Sweden Japan South Africa 50 countries UK Colombia Canada Thailand UK Europe UK South Africa Sweden/Finland Wales Canada former Soviets US Japan Chile Europe Finland/Poland/Spain Europe

93–94 98 97 91–96 03 95–99 00 02–03 00–02 02–03 04 95–96 90–04 03 06 02–04 03 98–03 02 09 58–04 01 99–05 04 07 07 05–08 08–09 04–05 08 05 00–07 02–04 06–08 08 05 07 08 10 10 11 09–10 02–09 08–09 02–12

+ + 0 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 0 + + + + + + + + + + 0 + + + + + + 0 + + +

The table summarizes previous studies of the effect of self-reported trust on self-rated health. +, −, and 0, refer to positive, negative, and insignificant (or very weak) effects, respectively.

are most common measures in the studies of social capital and health, which are summarized by Table 1. A metaanalysis performed by Gilbert, Quinn, Goodman, Butler, and Wallace (2013) finds the positive effect of social capital on self-reported health and mortality. However, literature on the relationship between social capital and health is not entirely consistent. While many studies support the positive effect of social capital on health (for review, see Agampodi, ad Glozier, & Siribaddana, 2015; Islam, Merlo, Kawachi, Lindström, & Gerdtham, 2006; Murayama, Fujiwara, & Kawachi, 2012), some do not provide such results as shown by Table 1. The mixed evidence could be due to differences in measures of social capital and health, contexts, periods and areas studied. Most previous work on the relationship between social capital and health has been carried out using individual-level cross-sectional data. The current study contributes to the literature by providing a

panel data study at country-level. Panel data are useful for the analysis of causal relationships since changes in a set of variables are directly measured (Finkel, 1995). Moreover, by focusing on the distinction between bonding and bridging social capital, this study expands the understanding of the effect of social capital on health. 2. Main concepts, theories and earlier research The current study proposes that the effect of social capital on health depends on the type of social capital. Early studies such as Putnam (1995) distinguished between two types of social capital: bonding social capital and bridging social capital. Bonding social capital is a social tie between homogeneous members of a community, such as family members and the members of religious groups. Bridging social capital is a loose connection between mem-

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bers of heterogeneous groups, such as youth service groups (Putnam, 2000, p. 22). In addition to the two traditional types of social capital, linking social capital has often been included as one of the types of social capital by recent studies. However, this study does not discuss linking social capital since the focus of the paper is on the contrasting features between bonding and bridging social capital. Linking social capital can be treated as a special case of bridging social capital (Kawachi, Subramanian, & Kim, 2008, p. 5). It is important to distinguish between bonding social capital and bridging social capital when analyzing social factors as well as health outcomes (Eriksson, 2011; Ferlander, 2007). The two types of social capital have different effects on society. Bonding social capital is created through trust within closed groups, which often leads to excluding non-members and inter-group hostility. For example, the American construction industry was dominated by Italian, Irish or Polish immigrants, and it was difficult for newcomers to enter the industry (Portes & Landolt, 1996). Bonding social capital is effective in enforcing social norms but typically becomes an obstacle to the free movement of information across social networks. Beyerlein and Hipp (2005) examine the effect of social capital on crime rates and find that bonding social capital is associated with higher crime rates, while bridging social capital is related to lower crime rates. How does social capital affect health? Various hypotheses explain the relationship between social capital and health. Four hypotheses are discussed below. First, social capital improves mental health (for review, see Almedom, 2005). Social network and trust can reduce stress from anxiety and fear about the behavior of others (Abbott & Freeth, 2008, pp. 879–880). Neighborhood social capital provides affective support and acts as the source of self-esteem and mutual respect (Kawachi et al., 1999, p. 119). These are called the compositional health effects of social capital (Veenstra et al., 2005, p. 2800). The relationship between social capital and mental health has been examined empirically and supported by many studies (for review, see De Silva, McKenzie, Harpham, & Huttly, 2005; Ehsan & De Silva, 2015), which are summarized by Table 2. Second, social capital makes possible the faster diffusion of health-promoting innovations through information channels (Rostila, 2007, p. 227). Community members can obtain relevant, timely, and trustworthy information through social networks (Sandefur & Laumann, 1998, pp. 485–488). It helps to improve health-related decisions such as eating habits, selecting a physician or a hospital, exercise patterns, and so on (Scheffler & Brown, 2008, p. 325). Third, social capital provides social control and support. People often control other people through social networks (Sandefur & Laumann, 1998, pp. 488–491). Social capital encourages healthy norms through informal social control (Kawachi, 1999, p. 124). People exercise informal control over deviant health-related behaviour of others in a community, such as smoking and alcohol abuse (Rostila, 2007, p. 227). Moreover, social capital provides various forms of social support such as social aid in dealing with stressful life events (Sandefur & Laumann, 1998, pp. 491–494). In a high social capital area, people can borrow money from a neighbor to purchase prescription medicines.

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Fourth, social capital influences social and political factors that affect health, which is referred to as the contextual effect of social capital on health (Veenstra et al., 2005, p. 2800). Social trust unites people to ensure that government budget cuts do not affect access to public health services and facilities (Kawachi et al., 1999, p. 1191). Social capital can organize people toward use of green space or against local environmental hazards (Veenstra et al., 2005, pp. 2800–2801). Social capital produces egalitarian patterns of political participation, ensuring that governments are more responsive in their policies which assure the security and health of all its members (Kawachi, Kennedy, Lochner, & Prothrow-Stith, 1997). To the contrary, societies with low social capital underinvest in welfare and health, which adversely affects health (Rostila, 2007, p. 227). Theories tend to claim the positive effect of social capital on health, which is supported by many previous findings. However, as discussed above, the sign of the effect might depend on the type of social capital. Some studies distinguishing between bonding and bridging social capital report the positive effect of both types of social capital on health (for example, see Kim & Kawachi, 2006; Kishimoto, Suzuki, Iwase, Doi, & Takao, 2013; Meng & Chen, 2014; Poortinga, 2012). However, other studies show the negative effect of bonding social capital and the positive effect of bridging social capital (for example, see Leung, Chin, & Petrescu-Prahova, 2016; Mitchell & LaGory, 2002; Stafford, De Silva, Stansfeld, & Marmot, 2008). The possibility of the negative effect of bonding social capital on health can be explained on the basis of the characteristics of bonding social capital. Bonding social capital excludes non-members, which is likely to limit the transfer of information between groups. In addition, bonding social capital makes it easy to impose collective sanctions on violations of social norms, which also causes mental distress (Kim & Kawachi, 2006; Mitchell & LaGory, 2002). The hypothesis to be tested in this study is that bonding social capital is negatively related to health, while bridging social capital is positively related to health. Given the opposite effects of bonding and bridging social capital, the benefit of general social capital to health is not obvious. It is also noteworthy that social capital is a more pronounced determinant of health in low socioeconomic settings (for review, see Story, 2013). Social capital might be of particular importance to health in less developed countries since they do not provide sufficient public health infrastructure. In such areas, social capital can serve as a substitute for health care. Social capital provides access to preventive and medical services, especially in deprived neighborhoods (Kawachi, 1999, p. 125).

3. Data and methods In order to examine the effect of social capital on health, we use regression analysis to investigate country-level unbalanced panel data of 194 countries for the time period 1990–2015. In this section, we discuss the variables–social capital, health outcome, and control variables–and the data set used in the regression analysis. Then, we present the econometric methodology employed in the analysis.

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Table 2 Previous studies of social capital and mental health. Country

Period

Social capital variable

Result

Harpham, Grant, and Rodriguez (2004)

Colombia

02

Trust Membership

+ 0

Araya et al. (2006)

UK

01

Trust Social cohesion Participation

+ + 0

Phongsavan, Chey, Bauman, Brooks, and Silove (2006)

Australia

03

Trust Participation Connections

+ 0 +

De Silva, Huttly, Harpham, and Kenward (2007)

Peru, India

02

Cognitive social capital Membership Citizenship activity

+ 0 0

Lofors and Sundquist (2007)

Sweden

97–99

Voting participation

+

Scheffler, Brown, and Rice (2007)

US

99–01

PSC Index

+

Fujiwara and Kawachi (2008a)

US

95–98

Trust Mutual aid Volunteer work Participation

+ 0 0 0

˚ Aslund, Starrin, and Nilsson (2010)

Sweden

08

Trust Neighbourhood social capital

+ +

Berry and Welsh (2010)

Australia

06

trust Informal connectedness Civic engagement

+ + +

Hamano et al. (2010)

Japan

08

Trust Membership Neighborhood associations

+ + +

Giordano and Lindström (2011)

UK

00–07

Trust

+

Webber, Huxley, and Harris (2011)

UK

05–06

Social capital

0

Bassett and Moore (2013)

Canada

08

trust Cohesion

+ +

Bertotti et al. (2013)

UK

11–12

Social networks Civic participation

+ −

Tomita and Burns (2013)

South Africa

08

Trust Civic participation

+ 0

Economou et al. (2014)

Greece

11

Trust

0

Tsuboya, Tsutsumi, and Kawachi (2015)

Japan

10–11

Workplace social capital

+

Landstedt, Almquist, Eriksson, and Hammarström (2016)

Sweden

81–07

Civic engagement

+

Lindström and Giordano (2016)

UK

07–09

Trust

+

Musalia (2016)

Kenya

05

Trust Membership

+ +

The table summarizes previous studies of the effect of social capital on mental health. +, −, and 0 refer to positive, negative, and insignificant (or very weak) effects, respectively.

The social capital variables used in this study are following: The trust index (trust) and the religiosity index (relig) reported from World Values Survey which provides country-level as well as individual-level data at five-year intervals, and the index of Rule of Law from the Worldwide Governance Indicators of the World Bank (rule). These three variables represent general (or aggregate) social capital, bonding social capital, and bridging social capital, respectively. The trust index is the percentage of respondents answering “yes” to the question: Would you say that most people can be trusted? This generalized trust has been used as a proxy for social capital by many studies. However, the

trust index leads to another question: “How wide a circle of others do respondents have in mind when they indicate their trust in unspecified people?” (Delhey, Newton, & Welzel, 2011, p. 787). If the respondents think of people they meet on a daily basis, the index would indicate bonding social capital. If they think of people they do not know personally, the index is likely to indicate bridging social capital. Since the question leaves the circle of “most people” unspecified, the trust index implies both concepts of bonding social capital and bridging social capital. Thus, this study includes the trust index as a variable of general (or aggregate) social capital which includes both concepts of social capital.

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Fig. 1. trust and life.

The religiosity index is the percentage of the population who belong to religious organizations. Since social trust between members of a homogeneous group such as a church represents bonding social capital, religiosity and church attendance have been used as a proxy for bonding social capital (Bartkowski & Xu, 2007; Lee, 2017; Liu, Austin, & Orey, 2009). In addition, bonding social capital levels are higher in countries that have a higher degree of religiosity among their population (Greeley, 1997; Smidt, 2003). The rule of law index reflects “perceptions of the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, and in particular the quality of contract enforcement, property rights, the police, and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and violence” (Kaufmann, Kraay, & Mastruzzi, 2010, p. 4). The rule of law index is used as a proxy for bridging social capital since it reflects social trust among socially heterogeneous groups in a country (Lee, 2017, p. 6). This study employs two widely used health measures: Life expectancy at birth (life) and infant mortality rate (mortality) reported by World Health Organization (WHO). Technically, they are easy to collect and work with. Life expectancy has been regarded to provide bottom line for measuring health status and the infant mortality rate reflects the factors of accessibility and quality of health care in the population (Larson, 1991, p. 20). Self-reported health has often been used as the measure of health in social capital studies. However, a standard criticism of such a measure is that it is a subjective measure and thus is spuriously correlated with social factors (Mellor & Milyo, 2005, p. 1107). Considering the criticism, we employ objective measures of health status, following a few studies using life expectancy and mortality (for examples, see Folland, 2007; Kawachi et al., 1997; Kennelly, O’Shea, & Garvey, 2003; Muennig, Cohen, Palmer, & Zhu, 2013; Rostila, 2007). For control variables we use health expenditure per capita (expnd), the number of physicians per 1000 (phys), and GDP per capita (GDP) reported by World Bank. The vari-

Table 3 Summary statistics. Variable

Median

Mean

s.d.

Life expectancy (life) Infant mortality (mortality) Generalized trust (trust) Religiosity (relig) Rule of law (rule) Health expenditure (expnd) Physicians per 1,000 (phys) GDP per capita (GDP)

69.90 23.80 22.90 13.10 −0.24 5.20 1.60 8.23

67.36 36.51 25.46 17.75 −0.08 5.22 1.85 8.28

9.81 33.36 14.56 17.38 0.98 1.75 1.72 1.52

The table shows the summary statistics of the variables used in the study. The variables expend and gdp refer to the natural log of the measures.

ables of health expenditure and physicians are included as proxies for health system, and the GDP variable is employed as a proxy for the level of economic development. The health expenditure and GDP are measured by the natural logarithm of the values. Summary statistics are presented in Table 3. For the regression analysis, pooled OLS regression, splitsample regression, quadratic regression, and fixed effects regression are performed. The first three estimations are conducted using pooled data and the final one is used with panel data structure. Moreover, in order to control for heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation which often exist in panel data, the White estimator (Arellano, 1987; White, 1980) is employed in the regressions. First, we conduct pooled regression using the regression equation below: healthi,t = ˇ1 socialcapitali,t + ˇ2 healthsystemi,t +ˇ3 economyi,t + i,t

(1)

where health refers to the health outcome variables (life and mortality), social capital to the social capital variables (trust, relig, and rule), health system to the health system variables (expnd and phys), and economy to the GDP variable (GDP). The subscript i refers to the coun-

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Fig. 2. relig and life.

Fig. 3. rule and life.

try, t to time period, and  is a classical error term. We perform regressions with various combinations of independent variables to detect the possible multicollinearity problem. We use a split-sample approach to examine the hypothesis that the effect of social capital on health is more strong in low socioeconomic areas. We divide the sample countries into two groups–high income countries and low income countries—according to the GDP level (GDP). We calculate each country’s average GDP per capita over the twenty-six-year period and separate countries into two equal size groups, those with GDP above the median and those below the median. The pooled linear regression is applied to the subsamples, and the possible difference of the results between low income countries and high income countries is examined.

This split-sample method can be used to overcome endogeneity problems. If the effects of social capital on health are quite different between subsamples, the observed difference should indicate the pure effect of social capital on health. In addition, although each coefficient estimate might be biased due to various reasons, the difference in the estimates between subsamples should be an unbiased estimate of the true difference since the potential bias for each group should be the same (Hoshi, Kashyap, & Scharfstein, 1991, p. 36). Nonlinearity is another issue of interest. It can be expected that social capital initially improves health outcomes but eventually harms health as social capital increases since too much bonding social capital might be detrimental to health. This study uses quadratic regression to examine a possible inverse U-shaped relationship

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Fig. 4. trust and −mortality.

Fig. 5. relig and −mortality.

between social capital and health: healthi,t = ˇ0 + ˇ1 SC i,t + ˇ2 SC 2i,t + ˇ3 healthsystemi,t +ˇ4 economyi,t + i,t

(2)

where SC refers to the social capital variables. The coefficient, ˇ1 , indicates the overall linear trend in the relationship between social capital and health across the data and ˇ2 implies the direction of curvature. The relationship is concave upward when ˇ2 is positive, and concave downward when it is negative. The inverse U-shaped relationship is supported if ˇ1 is positive and ˇ2 is negative. Note that the positive and negative signs of the linear and quadratic terms are not a sufficient condition for the inverse U-shaped relationship. In order to guarantee an inverse U-shaped relationship, we

need a “demonstration of an inflection point beyond which the curve becomes downward sloping, as opposed to just asymptotic, and a demonstration that this point is not just a statistical abstraction, but that it is within the range of acceptable or realistic values of the independent variable” (Herold, Jayaraman, & Narayanaswamy, 2006, p. 384). We check if the inflection point is within the acceptable range by drawing the curve from the estimates. Finally, we use fixed effects model, one of panel data estimation techniques, to fully capture the dynamic nature of the panel data. In panel data analysis, two robust procedures are widely used: Fixed effects and random effects models. A fixed effects model controls for the effects of time-invariant variables and a random effects model is based on the assumption that unobserved variables are uncorrelated with observed variables. The specification

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Fig. 6. rule and −mortality. Table 4 Pooled linear regression results. life trust

0.03 (1.88)

0.05 (1.77) −0.14*** (−5.54)

relig

−0.08* (−2.41) 0.67** (2.91) 2.17*** (8.43)

rule expnd

1.49** (2.91)

phys GDP R2

0.86 (0.85)

3.09* (2.24) 0.69

−0.27 (−0.92) 3.68*** (15.05) 0.68

−0.40*** (−5.32)

−0.18 (−1.93)

*

2.38*** (3.38) 0.63

0.91 (2.40) 3.53*** (10.39) 0.65

2.26*** (7.37) 0.64

1.05*** (3.71)

1.39*** (11.81) 3.23*** (16.32) 0.68

−mortality trust

−0.03 (−0.69)

−0.01 (−0.16)

relig

2.22** (2.84) 5.97*** (7.01)

rule expnd

3.80 (1.95)

phys GDP R2

7.64** (3.05) 0.58

2.28 (1.00) 4.25*** (3.47) 10.98*** (8.93) 0.64

9.09** (3.05) 0.69

0.89 (0.80) 10.52*** (11.90) 0.65

8.17*** (7.77) 0.63

1.56 (1.76)

4.13*** (11.24) 11.13*** (16.87) 0.68

Notes: The table shows the results of pooled linear regressions. Figures are regression coefficient estimates, and t values are shown in parentheses below coefficient estimates. *** Significance level at 0.1% level. ** Significance level at 1% level. * Significance level at 5% level.

tests such as F test, LM test, and Hausman test are performed to determine which model is more appropriate for the panel data, and the results favor fixed effects over random effects estimation. The regression equation is as below:

healthi,t = ˇ1 socialcapitali,t−1 + ˇ2 healthsystemi,t−1 +ˇ3 economyi,t−1 + i,t

(3)

Since the fixed effects regression controls for unobserved time-invariant country-specific effects, it is very useful Please cite this article in press as: Lee, S. Social capital and health at the country level. The Social Science Journal (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2017.11.003

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Table 5 Pooled linear subsample regression results. Low income

High income

life trust

0.13** (2.92)

life −0.00 (−0.07)

0.15* (2.66) −0.20*** (−4.95)

relig

−0.20*** (−4.41)

3.12 (1.67) 0.42

1.71** (2.92) 4.58*** (3.64) 0.52

−mortality

−mortality

0.26 (1.88)

0.15 (0.88)

phys GDP R2

trust

−3.08 (−1.07)

2.11 (1.59)

−0.29 (−0.78) 3.49*** (5.60) 0.80

8.22 (1.98) 0.64

−0.45 (−2.93) **

relig

12.63* (2.61)

phys

9.49*** (8.71) 5.30*** (4.14)

GDP R2

6.17 (0.90) 0.48

3.57 (0.52) 5.78* (2.63) 19.43*** (4.18) 0.50

14.63 (1.56) 0.58

4.82*** (9.53) 0.43

1.63 (0.93) 15.83*** (4.45) 0.61

16.25*** (9.46) 0.50

0.01 (0.60)

3.42*** (7.69) 1.79*** (3.47) 2.19*** (10.75) 4.32*** (11.02) 0.55

0.71* (2.06) 3.37*** (12.99)

1.97** (3.04)

1.83* (2.09) 0.56

0.03 (0.07) 4.28*** (7.87) 0.56

0.01 (0.40)

0.06 (0.82)

−0.29 (−1.20)

rule expnd

−0.08* (−2.23) 2.42*** (7.39) 1.26** (3.08)

rule expnd

0.00 (0.08)

1.51 (1.57) 0.57

−0.52 (−1.54) 4.21*** (11.33) 0.59

−0.25** (−3.32)

0.00 (0.10)

11.01*** (7.77) 2.09 (1.62) 6.66*** (10.17) 17.00** (13.64) 0.60

4.37* (2.12) 0.45

4.44*** (4.37) 6.34*** (6.96)

3.09 (1.95) 1.96 (1.89) 6.53*** (6.32) 0.45

4.20 (1.96) 0.59

−0.68 (−1.54) 0.47

0.64 (0.57) 8.33** (10.99) 0.47

−2.83 (−1.91) 0.40

0.96* (2.07)

0.87*** (5.75) 2.64*** (5.65) 0.47

3.61** (3.21)

2.67*** (8.22) 3.45** (3.14) 0.50

Notes: The table shows the results of pooled linear subsample regressions. Figures are regression coefficient estimates, and t values are shown in parentheses below coefficient estimates. *** Significance level at 0.1% level. ** Significance level at 1% level. * Significance level at 5% level.

Fig. 7. rule and life.

when examining the relationship between conceptual variables such as health and social capital, which do not represent something that we observe in real world.

4. Results This section reports and discusses the findings from the regressions. As a preliminary step, we present scatter plots of social capital and health in Figs. 1–6.

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10 Table 6 Pooled quadratic regression results. life trust trust2

0.11 (1.85) −0.00 (−1.44)

0.15 (1.53) −0.00 (−1.12) 0.05 (0.89) −0.00** (−2.98)

relig relig2

0.10 (1.39) −0.00* (−2.03) 0.62** (2.80) −1.17*** (−10.67) 2.37*** (9.18)

rule rule2 expnd

1.56** (3.03)

phys GDP R2

2.31** (3.31) 0.63

0.82 (0.82) 0.86* (2.30) 3.56*** (10.32) 0.66

2.98* (2.13) 0.71

0.00 (0.03) 3.40*** (13.44) 0.71

−0.17 (−0.89) −0.00 (−1.07)

0.18 (0.68) −0.00 (−1.16)

2.26*** (7.51) 0.65

1.33*** (4.53) −1.05*** (−7.98)

1.44*** (12.07) 3.33*** (17.10) 0.69

−mortality trust trust2

0.15 (0.87) −0.00 (−1.24)

0.16 (0.47) −0.00 (−0.55)

relig relig2

1.95** (2.61) −7.27*** (−21.31) 6.95*** (8.49)

rule rule2 expnd

3.98* (2.05)

phys GDP R2

2.22 (0.98) **

7.46** (2.99) 0.58

4.16 (3.29) 11.02*** (9.01) 0.64

8.96** (2.95) 0.69

1.44 (1.24) 9.98*** (10.35) 0.66

8.53*** (8.54) 0.68

3.19*** (3.54) −6.23*** (−15.05)

4.48*** (12.34) 11.67*** (18.56) 0.73

Notes: The table shows the results of pooled quadratic regressions. Figures are regression coefficient estimates, and t values are shown in parentheses below coefficient estimates. *** Significance level at 0.1% level. ** Significance level at 1% level. * Significance level at 5% level.

From the figures we observe that the relationship between social capital (trust) and health (life and mortality) is positive, the relationship between bonding social capital (relig) and health is negative, and the relationship between bridging social capital (rule) and health is positive. The results of the pooled linear regression are presented in Table 4. It is observed that general social capital has an insignificant effect, bonding social capital has a negative effect, and bridging social capital has a positive effect on health. In Table 4, the first two columns show the regression results between general social capital and health. The regressions do not provide significant coefficient estimates, which is consistent with the expectation that the relationship between general social capital and health is not obvious due to the conflicting effects of bonding and bridging social capital.

The second two columns refer to the results for bonding social capital, which support the negative relationship. All the coefficient estimates of bonding social capital are negative, even though one estimate is insignificant. The third two columns indicate the results for bridging social capital, which show the positive relationship with health. Among the control variables, the GDP variable has significantly positive coefficient estimates across all the models. It supports the common consensus that economic development improves health. The results of split-sample regressions are shown in Table 5. The results support the hypothesis that the effect of social capital on health is more pronounced in less developed countries. The contrast between low income countries and high income countries is clearly observed in the results. The effects of general social capital on life expectancy are significantly positive for low income coun-

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Fig. 8. rule and life.

Fig. 9. rule and −mortality.

tries and insignificant for high income countries. The effects of bonding social capital and bridging social capital on health are also stronger in low income countries in terms of significance levels and effect sizes. The insignificant relationship between social capital (trust) and health observed in Table 4 might be due to a nonlinear relationship between them. We examine the possible nonlinear relationship through quadratic regression, which is reported in Table 6. The quadratic regressions do not provide a significant result for general social capital as well as bonding social capital. On the contrary, the results for the bridging social capital show positive signs of the linear term and negative signs of the quadratic term that are statistically significant. Since the significant estimates of the linear and quadratic terms do not sufficiently support the inverse U-

shaped relationship, we determine whether the condition for the inflexion point is met or not by plotting the relationship. We draw the curves by using the quadratic regression estimates and the range between the minimum and maximum values of the bridging social capital. The curves are shown in Figs. 7–10, which indicate that the requirement for the nonlinear relationship is satisfied. All the inflection points obtained by solving the quadratic equations are within the acceptable range, which is apparently indicated by the figures. This finally supports the inverse U-shaped relationship. The effect of bridging social capital on health is initially positive but eventually becomes negative when bridging social capital reaches higher values. The results of the fixed effects regression are reported in Table 7. The general social capital does not have significant estimates, which is the same as the results of the pooled

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Fig. 10. rule and −mortality. Table 7 Fixed effects linear regression results. lifet trustt−1

0.01 (0.96)

0.00 (0.06) 0.02 (1.58)

religt−1

0.01 (0.63) −0.01 (−0.09) 2.63*** (21.11)

rulet−1 expndt−1

1.09** (2.89)

physt−1 GDPt−1 R2

3.34** (3.11) 0.74

1.88*** (4.39) 1.71*** (3.78) 5.61*** (7.98) 0.75

2.02* (2.20) 0.65

3.04** (3.55) 4.75*** (5.34) 0.75

0.07 (1.37)

0.10 (1.30)

0.23 (0.70) 0.38

0.79** (2.73)

0.57*** (3.67) 5.13*** (20.08) 0.34

−mortalityt trustt−1

−0.03 (−0.56)

−0.14 (−1.17)

religt−1

1.91** (2.74) 7.52*** (17.05)

rulet−1 expndt−1

−1.15 (−0.90)

physt−1 GDPt−1 R2

18.10*** (4.97) 0.60

4.60* (2.54) 1.19 (0.61) 17.32*** (5.72) 0.55

5.98 (1.54) 0.41

4.84 (1.23) 12.29** (3.00) 0.45

6.25*** (5.39) 0.38

2.88** (2.94)

−0.79 (0.13) 20.07*** (23.02) 0.37

Notes: The table shows the results of fixed effects regressions. Figures are regression coefficient estimates, and t values are shown in parentheses below coefficient estimates. *** Significance level at 0.1% level. ** Significance level at 1% level. * Significance level at 5% level.

regressions. In contrast to the pooled linear regressions, no significant estimates are found for bonding social capital in the fixed effects model. It might be due to that, since the religiosity index reflects the history, culture and tradition of the country, the index does not change a lot over time within a country. For bridging social capital, the fixed effects regression shows the positive effect on health. All

the models for bridging social capital show significantly positive estimates except for one insignificant estimate. 5. Conclusion In this paper, social capital is defined as trust within and across social networks. This study examines the effect of social capital on health by using a country-

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level panel data. In the analysis, we concentrate on the distinction between bonding and bridging social capital to better explain previous findings. Although most previous studies support the positive effect, a few studies provide mixed results, which need to be examined. The current study proposes that the mixed findings can be explained by focusing on the distinction between the types of social capital, especially the distinction between bonding social capital and bridging social capital. The first contribution of this paper is to enhance understanding of previous findings by focusing on the distinction. The hypothesis tested in the analysis is that bonding social capital negatively affects health but bridging social capital positively affects health. Given the opposite effects, the effect of general or aggregate social capital on health is not expected to be clearly identified. The empirical analysis uses pooled OLS, a split-sample approach, a quadratic model, and fixed effects regression. Using these various estimation techniques, this study can examine potential econometric issues such as endogeneity, nonlinearity, and dynamic change, which is the second contribution of this paper. The results support the hypothesis. The pooled linear regression shows the insignificant effect of general social capital, the negative effect of bonding social capital, and the positive effect of bridging social capital. The splitsample regression supports that the effect of social capital on health stands out more in low income countries. The inverse U-shaped effect is found only for bridging social capital by the quadratic regression. The fixed effects regression weakly supports the results of the pooled regressions. The implication of the results is that the socio-economic effects of social capital are different depending on the type of social capital, and thus we need to consider the complicated nature of social capital, especially in public policy domain. A limitation of the study is worth mentioning. Social capital studies are often criticized for lack of reliable measures. An adequate operationalization of bonding and bridging social capital is not self-evident. Especially in cross-country level studies, valid measures of social capital are hard to obtain. Most measures of social capital at country-level are likely to reflect different aspects which are not related to the concept of social capital (Coffé & Geys, 2007). This study attempts to distinguish between bonding and bridging social capital at worldwide level, but the social capital measures used in the study might not be solid indicators. The development of more valid measures of bonding and bridging social capital is left to future studies. Another limitation of this study is that individual-level variables are aggregated to country-level. Individual-level social capital is not automatically related to aggregate social capital. Since country-level social capital can include interpersonal externalities caused by individual-level social capital, the path from individual to country-level social capital is complicated (Glaeser, Laibson, & Sacerdote, 2002, p. 439). The second limitation is also related to the long standing debate of structure vs. agency, which is beyond the scope of this work.

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Please cite this article in press as: Lee, S. Social capital and health at the country level. The Social Science Journal (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2017.11.003