Does social capital determine health? Evidence from eight transition countries
研究了独联体八国中社会资本（信任、参与组织、社会隔离）对自评健康的影响，使用工具变量法处理内生性，发现信任与健康正相关，社会隔离与健康负相关。
There is growing interest in the role of social relationships in explaining patterns of health. We contribute to this debate by investigating the impact of social capital on self-reported health for eight countries from the Commonwealth of Independent States. We rely on three indicators of social capital at the individual level (trust, participation in local organisations, social isolation) and employ alternative procedures to estimate consistently the impact of social capital on health. The three social capital indicators are choice variables and are hence, by definition, endogenously determined. We attempt to circumvent the endogeneity problems by using instrumental variable estimates. Our results show that the individual degree of trust is positively and significantly correlated with health, this being true with least squares estimators as well as when relying on instrumental variable estimators with (and without) community fixed effects. Similarly, social isolation is negatively and significantly associated with health, irrespective of the procedure of estimation. On the other hand, the effect of being a member of a Putnamesque organisation is more ambiguous and usually not significantly related to health.