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Better Health With More Friends: The Role of Social Capital in Producing Health

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  • Cheuk Yin Ho

Abstract

This paper estimates the effect of an individual's number of friends on own health outcomes. The identification strategy exploits the panel structure of the friendship data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to estimate individual fixed effects in the likelihood of friendship formation and then uses the fixed effect estimates as a control function in a model relating health outcomes to number of friends. Empirical results show that having a larger number of friends improves physical and mental health and also lowers the frequency of smoking cigarettes. Specifically, making one more friend increases an individual's general health measure by 6.6% of a standard deviation. This suggests that accumulating social capital through friendship interactions is beneficial to health. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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  • Cheuk Yin Ho, 2016. "Better Health With More Friends: The Role of Social Capital in Producing Health," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(1), pages 91-100, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:25:y:2016:i:1:p:91-100
    DOI: 10.1002/hec.3131
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    2. Lebenbaum, Michael & Gagnon, France & de Oliveira, Claire & Laporte, Audrey, 2024. "Genetic endowments for social capital: An investigation accounting for genetic nurturing effects," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    3. Thomas Barnay & Éric Defebvre, 2018. "Retired, at last ? The short-term impact of retirement on health status in France," Working Papers halshs-01878922, HAL.
    4. Getik, Demid & Meier, Armando N., 2020. "Peer Gender and Mental Health," Working papers 2020/15, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    5. Etheridge, Ben & Spantig, Lisa, 2022. "The gender gap in mental well-being at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic: Evidence from the UK," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    6. Nathan Kettlewell & Jack Lam, 2022. "Retirement, social support and mental well-being: a couple-level analysis," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 23(3), pages 511-535, April.
    7. Sefa Awaworyi Churchill & Lisa Farrell & Russell Smyth, 2019. "Neighbourhood ethnic diversity and mental health in Australia," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(9), pages 1075-1087, September.
    8. Howley, P.; Boyce, C.;, 2017. "Not for everyone: Personality, mental health, and the use of online social networks," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 17/01, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.

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