A Multilevel Perspective on the Health Effect of Social Capital: Evidence for the Relative Importance of Individual Social Capital over Neighborhood Social Capital

Abstract

Employing a multilevel perspective on the health effects of social capital, this study analyzes how individual and neighborhood differences in self-rated health in Ghent (Belgium), relate to individual and collective social mechanisms, when taking demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of individuals into account. This study estimates the health effects of social trust, informal social control and disorder at the neighborhood level and social support and network size at the individual level, using indicators indebted to both the normative and resource-based approaches to social capital. Instead of the mere aggregation of individual indicators of social capital, this study uses the key informant technique as a methodologically superior measurement of neighborhood social capital, which combined with a multilevel analysis strategy, allows to disentangle the health effects of individual and neighborhood social capital. The analysis highlights the health benefits of individual social capital, i.e., individual social support and network size. The study indicates that controlling for individual demographic and socioeconomic characteristics reduces the effect of the neighborhood-level counterparts and the neighborhood characteristics social trust and neighborhood disorder have significant, but small health effects. In its effects on self-rated health, social capital operates on the individual level, rather than the neighborhood level.