Trust me, you will be in better health

Rocco, Lorenzo (2014): Trust me, you will be in better health. Published in: Health Policy No. 116 (2014): pp. 123-132.

Abstract

Along the pathway traced by few recent contributions that attempt to identify the causal effect of social capital on health, this paper analyzes whether individual social capital reduces the probability of experiencing 11 long-lasting and chronic diseases. The empirical problems related to reverse causation and unobserved heterogeneity are addressed by means of a procedure that exploits the within-individual variation between the timings of first occurrence of the 11 diseases considered. Estimates indicate that the probability of occurrence is on average 14 to 18 percent lower among individuals reporting to “trust most of the other people”. This result is robust to two alternative specifications as well as the inclusion or omission of individual controls.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: social capital; health; chronic disease; reverse causation; unobserved heterogeneity
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D71 - Social Choice ; Clubs ; Committees ; Associations; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I12 - Health Behavior; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I18 - Government Policy ; Regulation ; Public Health

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