Department of Public Health, University Hospital, Ghent University, Block A, De Pintelaan 185, 9000 Gent, Belgium.
Soc Sci Med. 2012 Jan;74(2):202-10. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.10.025. Epub 2011 Dec 3.
Although it is widely acknowledged that community social capital plays an important role in young people's health, there is limited evidence on the effect of community social capital on the social gradient in child and adolescent health. Using data from the 2005-2006 Flemish (Belgium) Health Behavior among School-aged Children survey (601 communities, n = 10,915), this study investigated whether community social capital is an independent determinant of adolescents' perceived health and well-being after taking account of individual compositional characteristics (e.g. the gender composition within a certain community). Multilevel statistical procedures were used to estimate neighborhood effects while controlling for individual level effects. Results show that individual level factors (such as family affluence and individual social capital) are positively related to perceived health and well-being and that community level social capital predicted health better than individual social capital. A significant complex interaction effect was found, such that the social gradient in perceived health and well-being (i.e. the slope of family affluence on health) was flattened in communities with a high level of community social capital. Furthermore it seems that socioeconomic status differences in perceived health and well-being substantially narrow in communities where a certain (average) level of community social capital is present. This should mean that individuals living in communities with a low level of community social capital especially benefit from an increase in community social capital. The paper substantiates the need to connect individual health to their meso socioeconomic context and this being intrinsically within a multilevel framework.
尽管社区社会资本对年轻人的健康起着重要作用已得到广泛认可，但关于社区社会资本对儿童和青少年健康的社会梯度的影响的证据有限。本研究使用了 2005-2006 年佛兰德（比利时）在校儿童健康行为调查（601 个社区，n=10915）的数据，调查了社区社会资本是否是青少年在考虑到个体组成特征（例如，某个社区内的性别构成）后感知健康和幸福感的独立决定因素。多水平统计程序用于估计邻里效应，同时控制个体水平效应。结果表明，个体水平因素（如家庭富裕程度和个体社会资本）与感知健康和幸福感呈正相关，而社区水平社会资本比个体社会资本更好地预测健康。发现了一个显著的复杂交互效应，即感知健康和幸福感的社会梯度（即家庭富裕程度对健康的斜率）在社区社会资本水平较高的社区中趋于平缓。此外，在社区社会资本存在一定（平均）水平的社区中，感知健康和幸福感的社会经济地位差异似乎大大缩小。这意味着生活在社区社会资本水平较低的社区中的个人尤其受益于社区社会资本的增加。本文证实了将个体健康与其中观社会经济背景联系起来的必要性，而这是在多层次框架内内在的。
