title: Social capital, income inequality, and self-rated health in 45 countries.
abstract: There has been growing interest in the relationship between the social environment and health. Among the concepts that have emerged over the past decade to examine this relationship are socio-economic inequality and social capital. Using data from the World Values Survey and the World Bank, we tested the hypothesis that self-rated health is affected by social capital and income inequality cross-nationally. The merit of our approach was that we used multilevel methods in a larger and more diverse sample of countries than used previously. Our results indicated that, for a large number of diverse countries, commonly used measures of social capital and income inequality had strong compositional effects on self-rated health, but inconsistent contextual effects, depending on the countries included. Cross-level interactions suggested that contextual measures can moderate the effect of compositional measures on self-rated health. Sensitivity tests indicated that effects varied in different subsets of countries. Future research should examine country-specific characteristics, such as differences in cultural values or norms, which may influence the relationships between social capital, income inequality, and health.
authors.affiliation: Baylor College of Medicine Houston, TX, USA. cmansyur@bcm.edu
authors.forename: Carol
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mansyur
authors.forename: Benjamin C
authors.initials: BC
authors.lastname: Amick
authors.forename: Ronald B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Harrist
authors.forename: Luisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Franzini
mesh_terms: D001294:Attitude to Health; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005260:Female; D014943:Global Health; D006304:Health Status; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income; D008297:Male; D012649:Self Concept; D012923:Social Class; D012924:Social Conditions; D012931:Social Environment; D012944:Social Support; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors