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Social Capital and the Paradox of Poor but Healthy Groups in the United States

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Abstract

Increased income strongly correlates with improved health and lower mortality risk. Yet in spite of having a lower mean and median income, both Hispanics and the foreign-born living within the U.S. have higher longevity compared with native-born, non-Hispanics. We explored the role of structural social capital in conferring protection against poor health outcomes among Hispanics and the foreign-born in the US. We used the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III 1988–1994 linked to prospective mortality follow up to examine the relationship between five measures of structural social capital and: (1) intermediate health outcomes (blood pressure, plasma fibrinogen, C-reactive protein, and total cholesterol) and (2) a distal outcome (all cause mortality). The foreign-born and Hispanics generally had lower measures of structural social capital relative to native-born non-Hispanics. Additionally, while structural social capital was protective against poor health or mortality among native-born persons, the association disappeared for Hispanics and the foreign-born.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Emergency Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai St. Luke’s/Mount Sinai West Hospitals, 1111 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY, 10025, USA

    Elizabeth Singer

  2. Department of Emergency Medicine, Mt. Sinai Hospital, 600 University Ave, Toronto, ON, M5G 1X5, Canada

    Roisin McElroy

  3. Department of Health Policy and Management, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 West 168th St., New York, NY, 10032, USA

    Peter Muennig

Authors
  1. Elizabeth Singer
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  2. Roisin McElroy
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  3. Peter Muennig
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Correspondence to Elizabeth Singer.

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Conflict of interest

Authors Elizabeth Singer, Roisin McElroy, Peter Muennig each declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Standards

This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors. Ethics approval for this study and analysis was not required because data was not collected directly from human subjects. This was a review of the NHANES-III survey, a nationally representative cross-sectional health and nutrition survey, without any direct or indirect human identifiers. Similarly, the National Death Index (NDI), used for prospective mortality follow up, did not directly or indirectly link mortality to any specific human subjects. The NHANES-III protocol was approved by a government ethics Institutional Review Board.

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Singer, E., McElroy, R. & Muennig, P. Social Capital and the Paradox of Poor but Healthy Groups in the United States. J Immigrant Minority Health 19, 716–722 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-016-0396-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-016-0396-0

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