Mediating Status Inequalities in Health: Age-Dependent Social Capital Effects
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2024.4.2536Keywords:
structural inequalities in health, social capital, professional status of relatives and acquaintances, mediation of inequalities in health by social capital, moderation of mediation effects by age, ISSP 2017Abstract
The study addresses the issue of social and structural inequalities in health and the impact of social capital on them. It is well established that health improves markedly with education, income, and occupational status. It also improves when individuals possess social capital, in particular when they have access to resources important for health through social ties with individuals of sufficiently high status in society. In recent years, the development of theoretical insights aimed at addressing this issue has been linked to testing the hypothesis that social capital may mediate the effects of socioeconomic status on health. The results of empirical testing, however, turn out to be contradictory — some confirm the presence of mediations, but others do not find them. Moreover, confirmation was obtained in certain groups of the population, in particular among the elderly. The presented analysis of Russian survey data collected under the International Social Survey Program (ISSP 2017) was aimed at substantiating the above theoretical provisions and implied the identification of mediating effects of social capital (professional status of an individual's relatives and acquaintances) when considering educational, income, and occupational inequalities in health. The authors analyze age differences in the manifestation of such mediations where age acts as a moderator of mediation effects. The results confirm that in Russia status inequalities in health are manifested with full certainty and social capital plays an important role in its preservation. Indirect effects of social capital were found to explain these inequalities to a certain extent. Moreover, age does act as a moderator of the mediating influence of social capital — it is almost imperceptible in younger ages and increases, gaining statistical significance, in older ages.
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