Abstract
Research has shown social capital to be important for health in general and for the health of older individuals in particular, yet there is a lack of knowledge about the impact of social capital on issues such as the capacity to deal with daily life and the way older individuals feel disabled through health problems (e.g. pain).
This chapter will present an analysis of the Austrian Health Interview Survey (N = 15,474). Significant interaction effects show that structural social capital is more important for older individuals than for younger people as a factor affecting contentment with health in general, with the capacity to handle daily life, and in particular to feel less disabled through perceived pain.
This chapter starts with a discussion on the measurement of social capital. Most studies on social capital and health measure social capital with indices, following the work by Putnam, Kawachi and Subramanian and colleagues. Applying the theory of Bourdieu, social capital may be operationalised in different ways, which will be discussed in the chapter. After presenting the results, the implications are discussed pointing out the importance of personal and structural social capital for older people’s health and wellbeing and their capability to live an active life.
This study shows that institutional (e.g. availability of information and transport) as well as informal social capital (e.g. satisfaction with personal relationships) are important resources for health and for the capacity to deal with pain for all age groups. However, older people are multiply disadvantaged. They suffer from poorer health and from less social capital than other age groups and in addition a lack of social capital is more detrimental to their health than to the health of other age groups. Therefore their needs for social capital should be supported in particular and public health actions should aim at, for example, enhancing public transport and access to medical care.
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Muckenhuber, J., Burkert, N., Großschädl, F., Rasky, É. (2015). The Importance of Social Capital for Health among Older People: The Bourdieu Perspective. In: Nyqvist, F., Forsman, A. (eds) Social Capital as a Health Resource in Later Life: The Relevance of Context. International Perspectives on Aging, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9615-6_4
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