The multidimensional nature of social capital: an empirical investigation for older people in Europe

"Social capital is a rapidly expanding research theme within economics and has become a popular concept with policy makers in both developed and developing countries. Despite this growth in popularity, social capital remains a controversial concept among economists. We argue that this is largel...

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Main Authors: Gannon, Brenda, Roberts, Jennifer
Institution:ETUI-European Trade Union Institute
Format: TEXT
Language:English
Published: Sheffield 2014
University of Sheffield
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.labourline.org/KENTIKA-19116368124919345409-The-multidimensional-nature-of.htm
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author Gannon, Brenda
Roberts, Jennifer
author_facet Gannon, Brenda
Roberts, Jennifer
collection Library items
description "Social capital is a rapidly expanding research theme within economics and has become a popular concept with policy makers in both developed and developing countries. Despite this growth in popularity, social capital remains a controversial concept among economists. We argue that this is largely due to a fundamental mismatch between the theoretical coverage and the vast majority of empirical work. Utilising data from a large cross-Europe survey of older people we use principal components analysis to demonstrate that social capital has multiple dimensions, and then explore the extent to which these latent dimensions coincide with the theoretical constructs of social capital. We use the association between social capital and a number of measures of health and well-being to demonstrate the importance of taking account of the multiple dimensions of social capital in empirical work. As well as showing that all the underlying constructs of social capital are significantly associated with health and well-being, our results also reveal that while in general this association is positive, close bonding in the form of household ties is inversely related to health and well-being; this contradicts the implicit assumption, often made in the literature that, in relation to social capital, more is always better."
format TEXT
geographic EU countries
id 19116368124919345409_b7ac1910ed934e63bd39b4ea16f1ac03
institution ETUI-European Trade Union Institute
is_hierarchy_id 19116368124919345409_b7ac1910ed934e63bd39b4ea16f1ac03
is_hierarchy_title The multidimensional nature of social capital: an empirical investigation for older people in Europe
language English
physical 23 p.
Digital
publishDate 2014
publisher Sheffield
University of Sheffield
spellingShingle Gannon, Brenda
Roberts, Jennifer
health
older people
well being
social capital
The multidimensional nature of social capital: an empirical investigation for older people in Europe
title The multidimensional nature of social capital: an empirical investigation for older people in Europe
topic health
older people
well being
social capital
url https://www.labourline.org/KENTIKA-19116368124919345409-The-multidimensional-nature-of.htm