Study shows social capital improves public health, but not equally for all communities

LAWRENCE — A wealth of research highlights that strong social capital, the connections and networks of relationships among and between groups, is linked to better community health. New research from the University of Kansas finds that social capital doesn’t necessarily lead to better health outcomes for everyone.

Researchers analyzed data from the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps (CHRR) project, a dataset maintained by the University of Wisconsin, for more than 1,000 counties. They found that high levels of civic engagement and participation were linked to better health outcomes for white residents. However, within those same counties, high levels of social capital were not associated with better health outcomes for Black residents.

The study examined two health outcomes: rates of influenza vaccination and life expectancy. High levels of social capital were systematically related to higher rates of white residents getting influenza vaccinations. Within the same set of counties, that relationship did not hold for Black residents. Similarly, high levels of social capital were associated with longer life expectancy, but only for white residents in a county.

“Data on health outcomes across racial and ethnic subgroups within communities is often not available at the local or community level and yet critically important to understand health disparities. This study leveraged the fact that in recent years, CHRR has compiled and released health data across racial and ethnic subgroups for highly populated counties, enabling us to examine the relationship between social capital and health across different racial/ethnic subgroups,” said Dorothy Daley, a professor in the School of Public Affairs & Administration and Environmental Studies Program at KU and one of the study’s authors.

While research has long shown that having access to social capital resources generally results in better health outcomes, little research had been done to see if those same positive correlations were maintained across racial lines.

“Structural social capital is a measure of resources within a county like civic, charitable or political organizations, voter turnout and census participation,” said Margaret Swenson of the University of Wyoming and the study’s lead author. “Across two different measures of community health, structural social capital is associated with better health outcomes for white populations, but not Black.”

The findings carry several implications, according to the authors: 

First, they are a sign that structural racism exists and influences both health outcomes. Such structural racism needs to be better understood and addressed, they wrote. 

Further, better measures of social capital for all communities, such as measures of minority-owned businesses, Black churches and simply considering race in more social capital research, would deepen understanding of both social capital and the ways in which it may shape population health, the authors wrote.

Public health initiatives that aim to intervene and/or generate social capital should consider developing wide-ranging indicators of social capital in partnership with Black communities and other diverse community members. Uniform interventions aimed at improving community health can, in fact, exacerbate existing health disparities between and within groups, even if unintentional, the authors wrote.

The study, written by Daley; Swenson, a KU SPAA alumna; Morgan Farnworth of the University of Missouri–St. Louis and a KU alumna; and John Pierce, affiliate professor in the School of Public Affairs & Administration, was published in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice.

The authors have previously studied connections between social infrastructure and health outcomes, finding high levels of social capital including high levels of arts organizations can lead to better health outcomes.