No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Social Capital’s Role in SDG 3 of 2030 Agenda: Promoting Health and Well-Being
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
This paper aims to provide a brief review of the much neglected ‘dark side’ of social capital. To highlight the contextual nature of social capital by way of examples from different geographies, we draw attention to the potentially detrimental effects associated with the concept. A significant body of literature addresses the advantages of being connected to various types of social bridges and bonds. While emphasising the ‘bright side’ of social capital, that literature pays limited attention to the negative attributes of social ties and their potentially detrimental effects on a number of social and economic outcomes. Although it is not reasonable to establish a dichotomy between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ social capital, it is possible to conceptualise such negative attributes in the light of the existing literature, in which the context-dependent nature of social capital is accentuated. We focus on two critical questions: (i) Why is it essential to address the contextual nature of social capital? (ii) How could geography come into play?
This study aims to gain a better understanding of the potential benefits of social network sites (SNS) as a means to help support personal social capital and well-being of older adults. Results are reported of a cross-sectional study in which a sample of Dutch older adults (n = 410) with a social network site account and varying in age from 50 to 93 (M=64.6, SD = 8.2) filled out a questionnaire including validated scales measuring SNS use, personal bonding and bridging social capital and psychological, social and emotional well-being. Regression analyses including relevant covariates supported our hypotheses that; (1) SNS use is positively associated with personal bonding social capital; (2) SNS use is positively associated with personal bridging social capital; (3) SNS use is positively associated with psychological well-being and (4) SNS use is positively associated with social well-being. No significant association was found between SNS use and emotional well-being. Although no conclusions of causality can be drawn, these results support the assumed potential of SNS as a means to help preserve personal social capital and well-being at an older age and add to the, still limited, research literature on this topic. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
The aim of this article is to carry out an exploratory analysis and literature review about the influence of the traditional and digital media on social capital. The concept-variable social capital refers to the set of attributes of the social dimension that promote cooperative behaviors and favor the functioning of the economy and society in general. Its study as a development factor has grown strongly in recent years. Social capital has three different dimensions: cognitive (norms and values), structural (networks of interpersonal relationships), and relational (trust). This text gathers various effects of the media in each of these dimensions and concludes that this influence can be considered as an opportunity for the implementation of social marketing, whose ultimate goal is the well-being of citizens.
There are many systematic reviews on social capital (SC) and various health outcomes, but each of these reviews shows one piece of the larger SC and health puzzle. The aim of this research was to systematically review systematic reviews on SC and health, in order to provide an overview of existing evidence and to identify strategies for future research. Nine databases were searched for key words that could fall under the broad umbrella of SC and health outcomes. We screened 4941 titles and abstracts and read 187 reviews before retaining 20 of them. A critical appraisal of each review was conducted. The reviews show there is good evidence to suggest that SC predicts better mental and physical health, and indicators of SC are protective against mortality. At the same time, many reviews also found numerous non-significant and negative relationships that are important to consider. It was unclear whether SC interventions for health were really improving SC, or other aspects of the social environment. Overall, this research shows that evidence on how various aspects of SC affect different health outcomes for different actors remains unclear. Intergroup and lifecourse perspectives could help clarify this link. Future research could benefit from conceptualizing the link between SC and health in a what, who, where, when, why and how framework.
Social capital is an expanding research theme in economics, but it remains a controversial concept and its use as an analytical tool has been questioned. The criticisms are exacerbated by a mismatch between theoretical coverage of the concept and empirical work. We demonstrate, using a large European survey of older people, that social capital is multi-dimensional, and explore the extent to which these latent dimensions coincide with its theoretical constructs. We use the association between social capital and health to demonstrate the importance of accounting for the multi-dimensionality in empirical work. We show that all the dimensions of social capital are associated with health, but while in general this association is positive, close household ties are inversely related to health and well-being. This potential ‘dark side’ of social capital has been largely neglected to date but is important if social capital is to be a useful analytical tool.
The concept of social capital has received increasing attention in recent years. The complexity and multidimensionality that accompany the variable of social capital have caused confusion and ambiguity. This article presents a synthesis of social capital in three perspectives. From the individualistic or micro-social perspective, social capital is an “individual resource” that consists of the networks of relations of the focal subject that bring it a set of instrumental and expressive resources. For the communitarian or meso-social perspective, social capital is a “community resource” or set of attributes and properties present in the social structure (shared norms and values, private trust, closure …) that facilitate its functioning and collective action. Finally, for the macrosocial perspective, social capital is a “macro-social and macro-institutional resource” resting on aspects such as civic-mindedness, general trust and social cohesion, which favors the functioning of the economy and society in general.
Purpose:
Mental disorders are a major contributor to the global burden of disease and disability, and can be extremely costly at both individual and community level. Social capital, (SC) defined as an individual's social relationships and participation in community networks, may lower the risk of mental disorders while increasing resilience capacity, adaptation and recovery. SC interventions may be a cost-effective way of preventing and ameliorating these conditions. However, the impact of these SC interventions on mental health still needs research.
Methods:
We conducted a systematic review of SC-based interventions to investigate their effect on mental health outcomes from controlled, quasi-experimental studies or pilot trials. We searched twelve academic databases, three clinical trials registries, hand-searched references and contacted field experts. Studies' quality was assessed with the Cochrane Risk of Bias tools for randomized and non-randomized studies.
Results:
Seven studies were included in the review, published between 2006 and 2016. There was substantial heterogeneity in the definitions of both SC and mental disorders among the studies, preventing us from calculating pooled effect sizes. The interventions included community engagement and educative programs, cognitive processing therapy and sociotherapy for trauma survivors, and neighbourhood projects.
Conclusions:
There are paucity of SC interventions investigating the effect on mental health outcomes. This study showed that both SC scores and mental health outcomes improved over time but there was little evidence of benefit compared to control groups in the long term. Further high-quality trials are needed, especially among adverse populations to assess sustainability of effect.
In this paper we analyze the non-instrumental dimension of social capital and its effects on subjective well-being. In the first part, we define the characteristics of production and consumption of relational goods. The second section analyses the influence of the different expressions of relational goods and social capital on individual subjective well-being. In the third, we test the explanatory power of this variable on the Easterlin’s paradox using the results of a survey on individual social capital in Spain. The main findings from the empirical analysis for Spanish society allow us to strengthen the hypothesis. We found a weak explanatory capacity of income or educational level or instrumental dimensions of social capital (expert mobilization) while a strong link between expressions of relational goods (domestic mobilization, household stability, partnership, trust and security in the environment) was found.
In the present paper we analyze the determinants of happiness proxying by subjective welfare. The main objective is twofold: on the one hand, to put to the test the Easterlin’s paradox (the lack of a direct relationship between income and subjective wellbeing at aggregate level) and, on the other hand, to weight influence of relational goods in determining happiness. The analytical framework adopts the perspective of happiness economics and the empirical evidence is derived from the estimation of a microeconometric function of happiness applying a Logit model both when using cross sectional and panel data. The results show that in Spanish society income plays a secondary and subjective role, while other variables that are associated directly or indirectly to relational goods are revealed to be very important.En el presente trabajo se analizan los determinantes de la felicidad, entendida esta como satisfacción subjetiva revelada. El principal objetivo tiene un doble componente: por un lado, se trata de contrastar la paradoja de Easterlin para la sociedad española (ausencia de un vínculo directo entre el incremento de la renta per capita y la evolución del bienestar subjetivo revelado a nivel agregado) y, por otro, evaluar el papel que desempeñan los bienes relacionales como determinantes de la felicidad. El marco analítico adoptado se encuadra dentro de la denominada happiness economics y la evidencia empírica se deriva de la estimación de una función microeconométrica de la felicidad aplicando un modelo Logit tanto en cortes temporales como en datos de panel. Los resultados obtenidos permiten concluir que en España el ingreso desempeña un papel secundario y subjetivo, mientras que se revelan como importantes las variables asociadas directa o indirectamente a los bienes relacionales.
The paper discusses some issues of the debate on happiness in economics. In particular it deals with the relationship between happiness and sociality. In fact, in contemporary 'economics and happiness' literature there is a new interest in interpersonal relationships thanks to the huge empirical evidence that genuine sociality is one of the heaviest components of self-reported happiness. At the same time, mainstream economics is badly equipped for studying genuine sociality, because it treats interpersonal interactions as elements to be taken into account in terms of externalities. The intuition originating the paper is the conviction that if research on happiness aims at taking into account non-instrumental interpersonal relations, i.e. 'relational goods', scholars will profit by a reconsideration or retrieving of the Aristotelian tradition of happiness as eudaimonia.
This paper attempts to show how the quality of the social fabric of a community or nation affects its capacity to deal with crises and to develop human and natural resources in ways that maintain and sustainably improve subjective well-being. Three types of crisis will be used as examples. These include economic crises; transition and other institutional crises; and conflicts over sustainable resource use. The bulk of the new results in this paper relate to economic crises and institutional transitions, and shows that communities and nations with better social capital and trust respond to crises and transitions more happily and effectively.
Social capital is associated with health behaviours and health. Our objective was to explore how different dimensions of social capital and health-related behaviours are associated, and whether health behaviours mediate this association between social capital and self-rated health and psychological well-being.
We used data from the Health 2000 Survey (n=8028) of the adult population in Finland. The response rate varied between 87% (interview) and 77% (the last self-administered questionnaire). Due to item non-response, missing values were replaced using multiple imputation. The associations between three dimensions of social capital (social support, social participation and networks, trust and reciprocity) and five health behaviours (smoking, alcohol use, physical activity, vegetable consumption, sleep) were examined by using logistic regression and controlling for age, gender, education, income and living arrangements. The possible mediating role of health behaviours in the association between social capital and self-rated health and psychological well-being was also analysed with a logistic regression model.
Social participation and networks were associated with all of the health behaviours. High levels of trust and reciprocity were associated with non-smoking and adequate duration of sleep, and high levels of social support with adequate duration of sleep and daily consumption of vegetables. Social support and trust and reciprocity were independently associated with self-rated health and psychological well-being. Part of the association between social participation and networks and health was explained by physical activity.
Irrespective of their social status, people with higher levels of social capital -- especially in terms of social participation and networks -- engage in healthier behaviours and feel healthier both physically and psychologically.
Purpose of the study:
We aimed to investigate whether social capital (obtaining support through indirect ties such as from neighbors) and social cohesion (interdependencies among neighbors) within neighborhoods positively affect the well-being of older adults.
Design and methods:
This cross-sectional study included 945/1440 (66 % response rate) independently living older adults (aged >70 years) in Rotterdam. We fitted a hierarchical random-effects model to account for the hierarchical structure of the study design: 945 older adults (level 1) nested in 72 neighborhoods (level 2).
Results:
Univariate analyses showed that being born in the Netherlands, house ownership, education, income, social capital of individuals, neighborhood security, neighborhood services, neighborhood social capital, and neighborhood social cohesion were significantly related to the well-being of older adults. Multilevel analyses showed that social capital of individuals, neighborhood services, neighborhood social capital, and neighborhood social cohesion predicted the well-being of older adults. Single and poor older adults reported lower well-being than did better-off and married older adults. However, the effects of marital status and income were mediated by neighborhood services, social capital, and social cohesion. Neighborhood services, social capital and social cohesion may act as buffer against the adverse effects of being single and poor on the well-being of older adults.
Implications:
The results of this study support the importance of social capital of individuals, as well as social capital within the neighborhood and social cohesion within the neighborhood for well-being of older adults. The well-being of older adults may also be enhanced through the improvement of quality of neighborhood services.
This article is a review of the PhD Thesis of Malin Eriksson, entitled 'Social capital, health and community action - implications for health promotion.' The article presents a theoretical overview of social capital and its relation to health, reviews empirical findings of the links between social capital and (self-rated) health, and discusses the usefulness of social capital in health promotion interventions at individual and community levels. Social capital, conceptualized as an individual characteristic, can contribute to the field of health promotion by adding new knowledge on how social network interventions may best be designed to meet the needs of the target group. The distinction of different forms of social capital, i.e. bonding, bridging, and linking, can be useful in mapping the kinds of networks that are available and health-enhancing (or damaging) and for whom. Further, social capital can advance social network interventions by acknowledging the risk for unequal distribution of investments and returns from social network involvement. Social capital, conceptualized as characterizing whole communities, provides a useful framework for what constitutes health-supporting environments and guidance on how to achieve them. Mapping and mobilization of social capital in local communities may be one way of achieving community action for health promotion. Social capital is context-bound by necessity. Thus, from a global perspective, it cannot be used as a 'cookbook' on how to achieve supportive environments and community action smoothly. However, social capital can provide new ideas on the processes that influence human interactions, cooperation, and community action for health promotion in various contexts.
Behind my reciprocation of a friend's gift may lie both instrumental reasons (I expect further future gifts) and 'communicative' reasons (I want to establish or confirm a friendship per se). In a theory of rational individual action, such 'communicative' reasons can be incorporated as an argument of an agent's objective function. This chapter starts by reviewing a recent literature that takes this direction and introduces 'relational' concerns through the concept of 'socially provided goods'. From a 'relational' perspective, however, individual intentions are not all that matters: a relation is characterized by the two (or more) persons linked and by the kind of link they have. This perspective, which in our view should complement the more traditional, individualistic one, is particularly suited to embed individual motivations in their social context and to study their co-evolution. In particular, we focus on the conditions under which reciprocity and altruism may survive and even spread over as social norms. Drawing from the literature on the dynamics of social norms, we argue that the combination of individual incentives and the forces of social selection may lead to a contraposition between a society's material success and its well-being, i.e., between its 'vitality' and its 'satisfaction'. Finally, we consider that the recent literature on the economic analysis of human relationships invites to a new reading of the 'classics' of economics and of moral and political philosophy. Both the new and the old literature point at the need to broaden the scope of economic modeling, to lay down the building blocks of a new, up-to-date approach to political economy that is equipped to tackle the challenges posed by advanced industrial societies in their social, cultural and economic selection dimensions.
Unhealthy diets threaten people’s health and this is exacerbated by capital inequality. Drawing on Bourdieu’s capital theory, this study constructs a model of residents’ healthy diet decision to analyze the effects of capital endowment and health information literacy on rural residents’ healthy dietary behaviors in China. Based on a dataset of 899 rural residents from 16 prefecture cities in Shandong Province in 2022, confirmatory factor analysis and path hypothesis test of capital endowment and health information literacy were conducted using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). We examined the mediating effect of health information literacy, tested the generalizability of the healthy diet decision model by Multi-Group analysis, and examined the importance ranking of model variables by Importance-Performance map analysis. Economic capital, cultural capital, cognitive social capital, and health information literacy had a significant positive correlation with healthy dietary behaviors, among which cognitive social capital had the strongest correlation, while structural social capital did not have a significant correlation. In addition to directly influencing rural residents’ healthy dietary behaviors, health information literacy also played a mediating effect in residents’ healthy diet decision model. Our healthy diet decision model had certain generalization ability. The government and other related parties should expand the channels for rural residents to obtain cognitive social capital to improve the accessibility of cognitive social capital for rural residents and improve their ability to obtain, identify and apply health information by means of publicity and education.
This paper studies social network changes during the COVID-19 crisis in the Netherlands and their relation to perceived loneliness for the younger and the older cohorts. Arguments from opportunity theory and social capital theory are used to formulate hypotheses on network changes during the pandemic. Core discussion networks and networks with practical helpers from two representative cohorts (18–35 years of age and 65+ years of age, n=1,342 participants in both waves) during the lockdown in May 2020 are compared with networks of the same respondents in May 2019. We find that networks became smaller and more focused on stronger ties, while weaker ties more often decayed. Feelings of loneliness incsreased on average for all respondents and in particular for those who live alone or have a disadvantaged socioeconomic position. Importantly, the decrease in the number of the practical helper network, that is, decline in relatively weaker ties, affects experiences of loneliness in both groups.
The definition of sustainability has always been discussed by experts. In 1972, definitions stressed restrictions on ecological systems, carrying out functions such as absorption and recycling of waste of anthropogenic activities, with the concomitant problems of improving social, educational, health, and employment. In 1987, sustainable development was defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” In 2019, it was defined as satisfying the needs of current and future generations, depending on appropriate circumstances of human, natural, and economic capital to provide for human welfare.
The concept of sustainable development has become a widely recognized goal for human society in the 21st century. The idea of sustainable development came to light in 1987 with the publication of “Our Common Future,” which firmly established sustainable development as a critical component of international development. Because inequalities that had been anomalies were increasing within and among nations, increasing poverty, especially in developing countries, depleting the ozone layer and causing global warming, depleting natural resources and endangering some species of animals and plants, and causing water and air pollution, and so forth, sustainable development came about as an effort to change the way of thinking about the planet. Behind this lies the reason for why the concept of development is now preferred instead of growth. Growth is believed to reflect only a quantitative aspect of countries without considering other qualitative items such as education, health, and equality. The argument is that growth is a quantitative increase in physical scale whereas development is qualitative improvement or the unfolding of potentialities. This research analyzes why and how the concept of sustainable development has emerged, how it should be conceptualized, and what should be done to achieve it.
In addition, the idea of sustainable development was first thought to be a strategy to against ecological disaster resulting from the extreme commercial exploitation of sources and the deterioration of the environment. The main awareness was to maintain an exceptional environment. Today the idea has been extended. It is has first-rate economic and social complexity. The evaluation of financial techniques in many countries has proven that fast financial growth precipitated critical issues from the viewpoint of sustainable development consisting of social, economic and environmental sustainability.
We use county level data from the United States to document the role of social capital the evolution of Covid-19 between January 2020 and January 2021. We find that social capital differentials in Covid-19 deaths and hospitalizations depend on the dimension of social capital and the timeframe considered. Communities with higher levels of relational and cognitive social capital were especially successful in lowering Covid-19 deaths and hospitalizations than communities with lower social capital between late March and early April. A difference of one standard deviation in relational social capital corresponded to a reduction of 30% in the number of Covid-19 deaths recorded. After April 2020, differentials in Covid-19 deaths related to relational social capital persisted although they became progressively less pronounced. By contrast, the period of March-April 2020, our estimates suggest that there was no statistically significant difference in the number of deaths recorded in areas with different levels of cognitive social capital. In fact, from late June-early July onwards the number of new deaths recorded as being due to Covid-19 was higher in communities with higher levels of cognitive social capital. The overall number of deaths recorded between January 2020 and January 2021 was lower in communities with higher levels of relational social capital. Our findings suggest that the association between social capital and public health outcomes can vary greatly over time and across indicators of social capital.
As interest in social capital has grown over the past decade—particularly in public health —so has the lack of consensus on exactly what it is and what makes it worth studying. Social Capital and Health presents the state of the debate, from definition to conceptualization, from effective measurement to real-world applications. The 21 contributors (headed by Ichiro Kawachi, a widely respected leader in the field, and including physicians, economists, and public health experts) discuss the potentials and pitfalls in current research, and salient examples of social capital concepts informing public health practice.
The book’s first section traces the theoretical origins of social capital, and the strengths and limitations of current methodologies of measuring it. The second half surveys the empirical data on social capital in key health areas. Among the highlights:
• Toward a definition: Individual or group entity? Negative as well as positive effects?
• Measurement methods: survey, sociometric, ethnographic, experimental
• The relationship between social capital and physical health and health behaviors: smoking, substance abuse, physical activity, sexual activity
• Social capital and mental health: early findings
• Social capital and the aging community
• Applying social capital to health communications
• Social capital and disaster preparedness
Social Capital and Health is certain to inspire researchers and advanced students in public health, health behavior, and social epidemiology. The collective insight found in these diverse perspectives should inspire a new generation of research on this topic, and lead to the development of interventions to improve public health.
P r i m e r S e m e s t r e d e 2 0 0 3 . P á g s . 1 1 -3 3 Resumen El crecimiento económico varía enormemente de unos países a otros en largos periodos de tiempo. La causa de estas variaciones es una cuestión clave para la política económica, y el trabajo empírico por países sobre esta temática ha sido popular desde principios de la década de 1990. Los resultados de las regresiones panel entre países muestran que estas diferencias en las tasas de crecimiento per cápita se relacionan sistemáticamente con un conjunto de variables explicativas cuantificables. Un resultado es un término de convergencia condicional -la tasa de crecimiento aumenta cuando el nivel inicial de PIB per cápita real es reducido en relación al nivel inicial de capital humano bajo las formas de nivel educativo y sanidad, para valores dados de otras variables que reflejan políticas y características nacionales. Para un capital humano y un PIB per cápita dados el crecimiento depende positivamente del imperio de la ley y de la ratio de inversión, y negativamente de la tasa de fertilidad, la ratio consumo público/PIB y la tasa de inflación. El crecimiento aumenta con movimientos favorables de la relación real de intercambio y con una creciente apertura internacional, si bien este último efecto es sorprendentemente débil. Abstract Growth rates vary enormously across countries over long periods of time. The reason for these variations is a central issue for economic policy, and cross-country empírical empirical work on this topic has been popular since early 1990s. The findings from cross-country panel regresions show that the differences in per capita growth rates relate systematically to set of quantificable explanatory variables. One effect is a conditional convergence term -the growth rate rise when the initial level of real per capita GDP is low relative to the starting amount of human capital in the forms of educational attainment and health and for given values of other variables that reflect policies and national characteristics. For given per capita GDP and human capital, growth depends positively on the rule of law and the investment ratio and negatively on the fertility rate, the ratio of government consumption to GDP, and the inflation rate. Growth increases with favorable movements in the terms of trade and with increased international openness, but the latter effect is surprisingly weak.
Using data collected from multiple respondents in all the business units of a large multinational electronics company, we examined the relationships both among the structural, relational, and cognitive dimensions of social capital and between those dimensions and the patterns of resource exchange and product innovation within the company. Social interaction, a manifestation of the structural dimension of social capital, and trust, a manifestation of its relational dimension, were significantly related to the extent of interunit resource exchange, which in turn had a significant effect on product innovation.
The paper investigates the interpersonal dimension of economic reality—i.e. the reciprocal influences between interpersonal phenomena of a communicative\affective nature and usual economic phenomena. A face-to-face interaction, or ‘encounter’, is depicted as a special productive process in which agents—besides exchanging ordinary goods or delivering services—create and simultaneously consume ‘relational goods’. Inputs include ‘relational assets’—;e.g. relation-specific information, or the social climate of a workshop—;which in turn are affected by encounters. Consideration of relational goods and assets broadens the economists' perspective in several directions.
Purpose: For many years, family scholars have documented the significance of the family as a major institution for carrying out essential functions for individuals and societies: reproductive, physical sustenance, economic maintenance, socialization, nurturance, and meeting sexual and other social-emotional needs. The concept of social capital draws attention to the equally significant role of the family in building and supplying this component in the workings of the economy and society. Social capital provides a rubric for bringing together various ideas about the family that have been circulating for some time. A quarter of a century ago, the late Kenneth Boulding (1973) gave attention to the integrative function of the family, its role in supplying “the glue” that helps other parts of the social-economic system to hang and function together. More recently, Robert Bellah and his associates (1985) discussed the weakening of the moral or social ecology of a community—the web of moral understandings, relationships and commitments that tie people together—and how the family contributes to or, conversely, diminishes the social ecology. I consider social capital as a resource (i.e., matter, energy, or information converted into specific forms for attaining goals) embedded in relationships among people upon which they can draw to provide information or other resources or to facilitate activity of social or personal benefit. Family capital is a form of social capital for its members, as well as a contributor to the more general concept. I will emphasize positive forms or outcomes of social and family capital, realizing that harmful forms and outcomes also exist. I consider families to exist in a state of interdependence with community, societal and global socio-cultural, human-built, and physical-biological ecosystems.
There is increasing interest in the “economics of happiness”, reflected by the number of articles that are appearing in mainstream economics journals that consider subjective well-being (SWB) and its determinants. This paper provides a detailed review of this literature. It focuses on papers that have been published in economics journals since 1990, as well as some key reviews in psychology and important unpublished working papers. The evidence suggests that poor health, separation, unemployment and lack of social contact are all strongly negatively associated with SWB. However, the review highlights a range of problems in drawing firm conclusions about the causes of SWB; these include some contradictory evidence, concerns over the impact on the findings of potentially unobserved variables and the lack of certainty on the direction of causality. We should be able to address some of these problems as more panel data become available.
Video-based media spaces are designed to support casual interaction between intimate collaborators. Yet transmitting video is fraught with privacy concerns. Some researchers suggest that the video stream be filtered to mask out potentially sensitive ...
This paper analyzes the causal relationships between marriage and subjective well-being in a longitudinal data set spanning 17 years. We find evidence that happier singles opt more likely for marriage and that there are large differences in the benefits from marriage between couples. Potential, as well as actual, division of labor seems to contribute to spouses’ well-being, especially for women and when there is a young family to raise. In contrast, large differences in the partners’ educational level have a negative effect on experienced life satisfaction.
This insightful book explores the limits of the two opposing paradigms of sustainability in an accessible way. It examines the availability of natural resources for the production of consumption goods and services, and the environmental consequences of economic growth. The critical forms of natural capital in need of preservation given risk, uncertainty and ignorance about the future are also examined. The author provides a critical discussion of measures of sustainability. As indicators of weak sustainability, he analyses Genuine Savings and the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare, also known as the Genuine Progress Indicator. Indicators of strong sustainability covered include ecological footprints, material flows, sustainability gaps and other measures, which combine the setting of environmental standards with monetary valuation.
This book applies economic theory to the welfare state. Its core message is that the welfare state exists not only to relieve poverty and redistribute income and wealth (the ‘Robin Hood’ function) but also as a series of institutions that provide insurance and consumption smoothing (the ‘piggy‐bank’ function). The book develops three central arguments about the role of the state in industrial countries and also in post‐communist and middle‐income developing countries.
First, the welfare state has an insufficiently understood piggy‐bank function that is additional to and separate from poverty relief. Even if all poverty and social exclusion could be eliminated, so that the entire population were middle class, there would still be a need for institutions to offer insurance (for example, unemployment insurance, long‐term care insurance, medical insurance) and consumption smoothing over the life cycle (for example, pensions and education finance in the form of student loans). Private institutions – though often effective in other areas – face pervasive problems of imperfect information, risk, and uncertainty, and attempts to address those problems inescapably involve state intervention.
Second, and consequentially, the welfare state is here to stay, since twenty‐first‐century developments do nothing to undermine those reasons – if anything, they do the reverse.
To argue that the welfare state is robust does not, however, mean that it is static. A third set of arguments concerns the ways it can and will adapt to economic and social change.
Despite increasing acknowledgement that social capital is an important determinant of health and overall well-being, empirical evidence regarding the direction and strength of these linkages in the developing world is limited and inconclusive. This paper empirically examines relationships between social capital and health and well-being-as well as the suitability of commonly used social capital measures-in rural China, where rapid economic growth coexists with gradual and fundamental social changes. To measure social capital, we adopt a structural/cognitive distinction, whereby structural social capital is measured by organizational membership and cognitive social capital is measured by a composite index of trust, reciprocity, and mutual help. Our outcome measures included self-reported general health, psychological health, and subjective well-being. We adopt multi-level estimation methods to account for our conceptualization of social capital as both an individual- and contextual-level resource. Results indicate that cognitive social capital (i.e., trust) is positively associated with all three outcome measures at the individual level and psychological health/subjective well-being at the village level as well. We further find that trust affects health and well-being through pathways of social network and support. In contrast, there is little statistical association or consistent pattern between structural social capital (organizational membership) and the outcome variables. Furthermore, although organizational membership is highly correlated with collective action, neither is associated with health or well-being. Our results suggest that policies aimed at producing an environment that enhances social networks and facilitates the exchange of social support hold promise for improving the health and well-being of the rural Chinese population. In addition, China may not have fully taken advantage of the potential contribution of structural social capital in advancing health and well-being. A redirection of collective action from economic to social activities may be worth considering.
The literature on the idea of 'social capital' is now enormous. Offering an alternative to impersonal markets and coercive states, the communitarian institutions built around social capital have looked attractive to scholars in the humanities and social sciences. The literature in consequence has a warm glow to it. In this article, I first study the various contexts in which the promises people make to one another are credible and then suggest that the accumulation of social capital is a possible route to creating such a context. I offer a tight definition of social capital - namely, interpersonal networks - so as not to prejudge its ability to enhance human well-being. The links between the microfoundations of social capital and the macroeconomic performance of economies are then studied. I also show that economic theory not only identifies circumstances in which communitarian institutions can function well, but that it also uncovers a dark side, namely, their capicity to permit one group to exploit another within long-term relationships. Copyright 2005 The Economic Society Of Australia.
The role and impact of social capital on the health and well-being of children and adolescents: a systematic review
- K Mcpherson
Los objetivos de desarrollo sostenible
- Pérez Martell
- R Pérez Martell
Relación Sociedad Civil, Estado y Economía en el mundo contemporáneo
- W Sánchez-Jiménez
- J F Montes-Moreno
The nature and logic of bad social capital
- M E Warren
- ME Warren