Not all social capital is good capital

Abstract

Limited empirical research on social capital has investigated the potential downside of social capital on health and well-being. We hypothesized that social capital and mastery might vary according to education with lower-educated persons experiencing fewer advantages. This study used a stratified cluster design to recruit a volunteer sample of 332 adult residents from 7 metropolitan census tracts. The survey included a position generator to collect social capital network data. Generalized estimating equations were used to account for the clustering of respondents in census tracts. Results indicated a differential association between individual social capital and mastery according to educational attainment. Among persons with a high school degree or more, higher social capital was associated with a higher sense of mastery; among less-educated persons, higher individual social capital was associated with lower mastery. Differences in the pathways by which lower- and upper-educated groups access social capital may play a role in social capital's negative association with psychological well-being.

Introduction

Social capital can be defined as the resources to which individuals or groups have access through their social relationships (Bourdieu, 1986; Portes and Sensenbrenner, 1993; Portes, 1998). In early essays on social capital, Alejandro Portes cautioned against the portrayal of social capital as wholly beneficial with no significant downside (Portes and Sensenbrenner, 1993) “Sociability,” Portes (1998, p. 18) remarked, “cuts both ways”. Social connections, which may lead to beneficial outcomes for some individuals or groups, may lead to detrimental outcomes for others. On the positive side, social capital can provide benefits such as familial support, social control, and privileged access to economic resources (Portes and Sensenbrenner, 1993). On the negative side, social capital can restrict individual opportunities and freedoms or result in excessive claims and obligations being placed on a person. Who you know may tip the scales balancing the positive and negative consequences of social integration (Mirowsky and Ross, 2003), but social factors, such as gender, age, or socioeconomic status (SES), can affect who you have an opportunity to know and the types of benefits that might accrue through those connections.

Empirical research has been slow, however, to examine how the potential advantages or disadvantages in health or well-being due to social capital might vary across social groups. Rojas and Carlson (2006), for example, found that the association of social capital with self-rated health in Russia was modified by education. Within impoverished Baltimore neighbourhoods, Caughy et al. (2003) showed that children whose parents had few neighbourhood social connections had lower levels of behavioural problems than the children whose parents had more social connections. Carpiano (2007) found higher levels of neighbourhood social support associated with higher likelihoods of smoking and binge drinking. In other words, social connections do not in themselves result in health benefits; instead, the content of social relations, including the resources available in those connections, may play a critical role in how social capital impacts health and well-being.

Given this important yet under-examined issue, the aims of this study were threefold: (1) examine quantitatively whether or not there were disparities in social capital according to educational attainment among Montreal adults, (2) assess if higher educated groups used different network pathways in accessing social capital than those used by lower-educated groups, e.g, strong (family and friends) versus weak (acquaintances) ties, and (3) examine if educational attainment modified the association of social capital with mastery. First, following the work of Bourdieu, we hypothesized that like other forms of capital in society, social capital was unequally distributed across educational attainment levels. Second, following the work of sociologists such as Lin and Granovetter, we hypothesized that (1) a person's weak, acquaintance relationships were an invaluable source of social capital, particularly for those resources that could be used for instrumental purposes, e.g., job attainment, and (2) that persons with higher educational attainment had greater access to social capital through their weak, acquaintance relationships. Third, although the creation and maintenance of social connections can provide access to the resources of others, such actions can also be a drain on one's own resources and time. We hypothesized that high SES groups had more abundant personal resources to buffer against the greater number of obligations that come with more extensive social connections. In terms of mastery, high SES individuals with more extensive social connections may view those connections as contributing to a greater sense of control, whereas low SES individuals with few resources but more extensive social connections may view those connections as reducing their sense of control. We selected mastery as a particularly relevant outcome on which to test these hypotheses since mastery has been postulated as lying along an indirect-cognitive path linking social environmental characteristics to cardiometabolic outcomes (Daniel et al., 2008). Mastery has been defined as the extent to which one sees one's life chances as being under one's own control (Pearlin and Schooler, 1978), and is considered an important dimension of psychological well-being and distress (Pearlin and Schooler, 1978; Mirowsky and Ross, 1986, Mirowsky and Ross, 2003). Mastery is also associated with positive health behaviour (Daniel et al., 2006, Daniel et al., 2004) and is an important health outcome itself (Pampalon et al., 2007).

In examining the association among social capital, education, and mastery, we sought to contribute to research on the potential downside of social capital for psychological well-being. In contrast to conventional indicators of social capital using trust and participation, we collected network data and constructed network measures of individual social capital using a position generator instrument (Lin, 2001). The position generator measures an individual's social capital by assessing respondents’ ties to persons working in specific types of occupations and if those persons are family, friends, or acquaintances. Family and friend relationships represent strong ties, whereas acquaintances represent weak ties (Lin, 2001). There has been increased recognition of the importance of network data for measuring and assessing the importance of social capital for well-being and health (Moore et al., 2005; Kawachi, 2006; Valente et al., 2007). One of the advantages that formal network measures provide for the study of social capital and health is greater attention to the types of resources to which individuals or groups have access and the ability to discriminate between the role of strong (e.g., family and friends) and weak (e.g., acquaintances) ties in gaining access.