Abstract: Background: The concept of social capital and its association with health has gained relevance in the last decades. Different proposals for its measurement and classification have been established, making the use of a wide range of variables essential for its proper coverage. In this sense, we aim at measuring two dimensions of social capital, bonding and bridging social capital, for the elder European population and how they both relate with self-assessed health. Recent evidence for this population group is missing. Methods: We used the 2011, 2015, and 2019 waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to obtain a proper range of variables assessing social capital. Fixed-effects logistic regressions were performed, regressing self-assessed health on social capital variables. We also included lagged values of social capital in our estimations to test temporal dynamics in the relationship between social capital and health, and conducted heterogenous analysis by gender and marital status. Results: High levels of bridging social capital reduced the odds of declaring a poor health status, even after controlling for socioeconomic characteristics, objective health variables, and year dummies (OR: 0.878 95%CI: 0.82-0.941). Our heterogenous analyses revealed that being satisfied with social networks is correlated with lower odds of reporting poor health among single older adults and females. Additionally, we observed that high values of bridging capital in 2015 were correlated with lower odds of assessing a poor health status in 2019 (OR: 0.928; 95%CI: 0.872-0.987), as were having a larger number of family members in the social network (OR: 0.939; 95%CI: 0.895-0.985) and being satisfied with bridging social capital activities in 2015 (OR: 0.899; 95%CI: 0.851-0.948). Conclusions: Our results highlight the important role of participating in social activities on European older adults' health across time. Thus, policies aimed at promoting these activities not only might reduce unwanted loneliness among older adults, but also improve their health across time.

Autoría

Descargar referencia