Social capital in the health development of children

Abstract

The paper investigates the impact of social capital on the health and health behaviour of children in the process of growing up. Therefore, the panel design employed includes 10 to 12-year-old school children, followed up for three annual waves. The data used is from the German survey of Health Behaviour and Injuries in School-Age – A Panel Study 2013-2020 (N ≈ 10.000 per wave). We take a longitudinal perspective to estimate the impact of changes in the volume of social capital on health-related variables. In this study, fixed effects models are used for longitudinal data. The findings show that an intrapersonal change in social capital over time has a significant effect on the health and health behaviour of an individual. This suggests that for the health development of (poor) children and adolescents, it is of foremost importance to build and stimulate social networks and resources (social capital) rather than concentrating solely on financial aid.