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SURVEYS

• Countries covered by NEB social capital surveys
• Countries with health and social capital indicators
• A special-purpose social capital questionnaire
• Social capital in African surveys
  

PEOPLE

THEMES

Social capital as networks

• Social capital networks in Russia
• Networking in a European public space
• Religion, Social Capital and Health
  

Health and social capital

• The Impact of Social Capital on Health
• Living Conditions, Life Styles and Health in Post-Soviet Societies
• Access to Health Services
• Corruption in Health Services
  

Civil society as social capital

• New Forms of Governance in Europe
• Participation in Civil Society: a 27 country analysis
• Networking in a European Public Space
• Support for Democracy. See also Moldova
• Trust in post-Communist societies

PUBLICATIONS

Research on social medicine and public health has long recognized the importance for physical and mental health of social support networks. The influence can be direct, when unemployment generates stress and heart attacks, or indirect, if peer pressure encourages smoking and tobacco-related deaths.

While epidemiological studies rely on aggregate data, CSPP studies use surveys of the self-rated physical and emotional health of individuals. This makes it possible to analyze why some people are healthier than average in a society, while others are unhealthy. By contrast, epidemiological studies usually draw inferences about national populations from the incidence of bad or pathological health, for example, deaths from cirrhosis of the liver or avoidable accidents.

For more than a decade the CSPP has been collecting social capital and health data with Barometer surveys of nationally representative samples of the population of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Countries covered include Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and ten new member states of the European Union: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Survey data collects far more information than do official statistics about both social capital networks and about health-related behaviour. Social capital indicators show whether individuals have friends from whom they can borrow money as well as what their net income is; whether social networks are used to exploit public services, including health; and distinguish between trust in people you know and in public employees such as doctors and police. Health data includes physical functioning, smoking, drinking and psychological self-control. (see Questionnaire).

The CSPP approach does not view social capital in isolation; it is concerned with empirically testing to what extent different forms of social capital may (or may not) improve individual health. It thus uses multivariate statistical analysis to control for the effect of standard social and economic determinants of health, as well as age and gender. The relation of social capital to other phenomena, such as endorsement of democracy and trust in people, is also tested empirically.

Social capital networks can be used to obtain access to health services, including queue jumping when resources are in short supply or bureaucrats are corrupt. Given the problems in the region, CSPP studies also include indicators of "anti-modern" forms and uses of social capital and has collaborated with Transparency International to develop survey-based indicators of the extent of corruption in the delivery of health services internationally.

The principal collaborators in CSPP studies of social capital and health are Professor Sir Michael Marmot, Dr. Martin Bobak and Dr. Amanda Nicholson at the International Institute for Society and Health, University College London Medical School and Professor Martin McKee, director of ECOHOST (European Centre on the Health of Societies in Transition), London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.