Chapter 4: Social Capital: An Economic Perspective

The literature on social capital and health is large and growing but amorphous. An outside observer would have the impression that social capital is an important factor in population health but would be hard pressed from reading the literature to say exactly what social capital is, much less how it works. If that observer were restricted to particular subsets of the literature, he or she would find that researchers who work in one subset have well-defined notions of social capital but those who work in another subset also have a well-defined concept of social capital that may bear no resemblance at all to that of researchers in other subsets. Makers of health policy who wish to derive the greatest value from the academic literature on social capital broadly defined will need a taxonomy…