Structural social capital and health in Italy

Abstract

This paper presents the first empirical assessment of the causal relationship between social capital and health in Italy. The analysis draws on the 2000 wave of the Multipurpose Survey on Household conducted by the Italian Institute of Statistics on a representative sample of the population (n = 46,868). Our measure of social capital is the frequency of meetings with friends. Based on IV and bivariate probit estimates, we find that individuals who meet friends every day or at least two times a week are approximately 11% to 16% more likely to report good health.