Locales of Trust: How Two Forms of Community Trust are Associated with Mothers’ Self-Rated Health in Indonesia

Objectives Social trust and access to social capital serve as important mechanisms to offset gender disparities in health in low-middle-income countries (LMICs) such as Indonesia. Indonesian women may have fewer opportunities to create strong social ties outside her social sphere and thus may benefit particularly from individual-level thin trust because generalized trust lowers barriers to gaining social support. We examined the role of thin trust and thick trust, two unique forms of social trust, to better understand the links between individual- and community-level trust and maternal health. Thin trust represents generalized trust in community members while thick trust represents strong and longstanding trusting relationships. Methods We employed nationally representative data from Wave 5 of the Indonesian Family Life Survey collected in 2014–2015 (n = 7276) to identify relationships between social trust and the self-rated health (SRH) of women in Indonesia, net of both individual- and community-level controls. Results We found evidence that both thick and thin trust benefit women’s health but operate at different levels. While thick trust decreased likelihoods of poor SRH at the community level, thin trust was associated with lower likelihoods of poor SRH at the individual level. Conclusions for Practice We argue that for women in LMICs, trust provides an important mechanism through which women potentially access both tangible and immaterial resources that positively influence health outcomes.