Socioeconomic Status, Social Capital and Health Inequality

• In Event: Poster Session: Class and Inequality & Political Science Education
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Class and Inequality

Abstract

Health is an important goal for human and also important to evaluate the society. With the development of medical and health technology, the life expectancy of human beings has been generally improved in the world. However, the health inequality has not really been eliminated in various countries, but has been expanding. Social stratification brings the health inequality, which has always existed. In the past, researches have mainly explained health inequality from four theoretical perspectives: materialism, social psychology, behaviorism and geneticism. Meanwhile, social capital, as an important dimension, has been paid attention to by many scholars. This study attempts to expand the explanation mechanism of health inequality and social capital will be considered as an intermediary mechanism between social economic status and health.
On the basis of previous studies, this study, on the one hand, verifies the impact of socioeconomic status on the health of Chinese residents, and puts forward the socioeconomic status hypothesis; on the other hand, according to the types of social capital, puts forward three intermediary hypotheses of social contact, social trust, social participation and informal norms. Based on CGSS2015, we establish multiple logistic regression and mediation models to test the above hypothesis. It finds that: (1) Socioeconomic status promotes health of people, mainly reflected in the education, occupational status and income level. (2) Social capital can be used as an explanation mechanism of health inequality, but it plays different roles in different types of social capital.
Specifically, in the aspect of social contact, the improvement of socioeconomic status can increase the frequency of social interaction. Compared with the residents who do not have social contact with their friends, the residents who have more social contacts are more likely to be in an advantageous position in the health stratification. In terms of social trust, the socioeconomic status can improve the level of general trust of residents, but the general trust don’t have an impact on health; only the special trust to relatives and neighbors will promote health, but for Chinese residents, the social relationship linked by kinship makes the individual's special trust high generally, which is not affected by the socioeconomic status. In terms of social participation, socioeconomic status can affect the individual' enthusiasm for organizational participation and political participation, but there is no correlation between social participation and health inequality. In conclusion, social contact can be used as a mediating mechanism, while social trust and social participation can not. In informal norms, social and economic status can improve social tolerance, so as to promote the level of health; and social integrity can not be used as an intermediary to explain health inequality.

Author

• YUYIN MA