The effect of social capital on health among European older adults: an instrumental variable approach

One of the key policy question for an ageing population is the identifications of the factors which influence health. Very recently, an increasing interest on social capital has developed and, surprisingly, not much is known for the European population. This study analyzes the effect of structural social capital on health (measured as self-perceived health) of the individuals aged 60 or more residing in European countries. The sample comes from the fourth wave of the survey on health and retirement in Europe. We use an instrumental variables approach in order to account for the reverse causality between social capital and health. We found that structural social capital exerts a positive effect preventing people to suffer of a poor self-perceived effect. Results are robust to different estimation methods.