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Neighbourhood Social Capital and Individual Mental Health

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Neighbourhood Effects Research: New Perspectives

Abstract

There is a long tradition of interest in neighbourhood effects from within the literature on public health and social epidemiology, which focuses on effects on individual health outcomes. This chapter investigates the relationship between neighbourhood social capital and individual mental health, and uses a formal econometric approach in an attempt to identify causal neighbourhood effects. The chapter contributes to the literature on neighbourhood effects and health outcomes by proposing an extension of the influential Grossman model of health with the explicit inclusion of interactions within the neighbourhood context. The chapter draws upon the Blume-Brock-Durlauf social interaction model to study the effect of neighbourhood social capital on mental health, using data from the Welsh Health Survey 2007 (WHS) and the Living in Wales 2007 (LiW) survey. The chapter proposes various instrumental variables to identify causal effects, uses objective measures of neighbourhood social capital for small geographies, and uses a measure of mental health derived from the SF36 (Short Form Heath Survey). Using this approach, and contrary to some other studies, it is concluded that neighbourhood social capital is generally being beneficial to individual mental health.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The published version dropped citation to Grossman and introduced a typographic error compared to the working paper version.

  2. 2.

    The closely related field of spatial statistics which is interested in spatial interactions also draws upon the same statistical mechanics literature, see Ripley (1990).

  3. 3.

    Their model parallels the probability structure of the so-called Curie-Weiss model in statistical mechanics (Brock and Durlauf 2001b: 240). They refer to Ellis (1985, chap. 4) though Parisi (1988: 24) and Baxter (1982: 39) give more accessible accounts of Ising model with mean field which result in similar aggregate behaviour of magnetization \( {m}^{*}\).

  4. 4.

    Physicists, instead, start with the working assumption that the coordinates and momenta in the equation of motion, at equlibria, follow the canonical distribution given by the so-called Boltzmann formula. See Parisi (1988: 2, Eq. 1.5) or Baxter (1982: 8, Eq. 1.4.1).

  5. 5.

    Again see Parisi (1988: 2) on \( h\) the magnetic field and \( k\) the Boltzmann coefficient.

  6. 6.

    In this connection, none other than Brock and Durlauf (2001a, p. 166) would welcome such empirical studies. “… this hardly means that these literatures [under-theorised empirical studies in the sense below] are incapable of providing useful insights. In this respect, we find arguments to the effect that because an empirical relationship has been established without justification for auxiliary assumptions such as linearity, exogeneity of certain variables, etc., one can ignore it, to be far overstated. In our view, empirical work establishes greater or lesser degrees of plausibility for different claims about the world and therefore the value of any study should not be reduced to a dichotomy between full acceptance or total rejection of its conclusions. Hence the determination of the plausibility of any exclusion restriction is a matter of degree and dependent on its specific context.”

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Acknowledgments

I thank the Welsh Assembly Government – Llywodraeth Cynulliad Cymru – for funding this work. Data used in this analysis are provided by the Government under contract designed to protect the anonymity of respondents and neighbourhoods. Ichiro Kawachi and Subu Subramanian have been especially generous with their ideas for which I am in debt. I am also grateful to the participants of the seminar series “Neighbourhood Effects” and in particular to Maarten van Ham and David Manley who organised the series.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Social Change, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Gindo Tampubolon

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  1. Gindo Tampubolon
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Correspondence to Gindo Tampubolon .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , OTB Research Institute for the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands

    Maarten van Ham

  2. , Centre for Housing Research, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, KY16 9AL, Fife, United Kingdom

    David Manley

  3. , Urban Studies, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8RS, United Kingdom

    Nick Bailey

  4. , The Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and S, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom

    Ludi Simpson

  5. , Centre for Housing Research, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, KY16 9AL, Fife, United Kingdom

    Duncan Maclennan

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Tampubolon, G. (2012). Neighbourhood Social Capital and Individual Mental Health. In: van Ham, M., Manley, D., Bailey, N., Simpson, L., Maclennan, D. (eds) Neighbourhood Effects Research: New Perspectives. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2309-2_8

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