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BMC Public Health
Published in: BMC Public Health 1/2016

Open Access 01-12-2016 | Research article

Social capital and healthy ageing in Indonesia

Authors: Junran Cao, Anu Rammohan

Published in: BMC Public Health | Issue 1/2016

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Abstract

Background

A large international literature has found a positive association between social capital and measures of physical and mental health. However, there is a paucity of research on the links between social capital and healthy ageing in a developing country environment, where universal social security coverage is absent and health infrastructure is poor.

Method

In this paper, we develop and empirically test a model of the linkages between social capital and the health outcomes for older adults in Indonesia, using data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey-East (IFLS-East), conducted in 2012. Using multivariate regression analysis, we examine whether social capital plays a role in mitigating poor health among older individuals aged 50 years and above in Indonesia’s most vulnerable provinces. We test the robustness of these social capital variables across different health measures (self-assessed health, Activities of Daily Living (ADL), measures of chronic illness and mental health measures), as well as across different demographic groups, after controlling for an array of socio-economic, demographic and geographic characteristics.

Results

Our findings show that access to better social capital (using measures of neighbourhood trust and community participation) is associated with a higher degree of physical mobility, independence, and mental well-being among older individuals but has no influence on chronic illnesses. These results are consistent when we estimate samples disaggregated by gender, rural/urban residence, and by age categories.

Conclusion

From a policy perspective these results point to the importance of social capital measures in moderating the influence of poor health, particularly in the Activities of Daily Living.
Footnotes
1
The term community refers here to the enumeration area, which is a geographical area defined by Statistics Indonesia. In this context a community may be part of a village or a neighbourhood in an urban setting. There are 98 unique communities in our sample.
 
2
For space considerations, although we included the same explanatory variables as in Tables 3 and 4, we only report the marginal effects from the social capital measures in Table 5.
 
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Metadata
Title
Social capital and healthy ageing in Indonesia
Authors
Junran Cao
Anu Rammohan
Publication date
01-12-2016
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
BMC Public Health / Issue 1/2016
Electronic ISSN: 1471-2458
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3257-9

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