Social Capital, Income Inequality and the Health of the Elderly

Abstract

It is of common knowledge that the improvement of medicine and living conditions in the twentieth century have greatly contributed to the formidable increase of life expectancy. Therefore many key factors that influence health are well known. What it is less understood and has increasingly grasping the attention of researchers are the social determinants of health. In this paper we will focus in particular on two: income inequality and social capital. After a thorough analysis that explains the nexus at the theoretical level, we will empirically evaluate it by mean of a mixed effects logistic model for the European individuals who are older than 60 in 2011. We find a strong significant association between self-perceived health and social capital, but no link with income inequality.