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Does It Really Matter Where You Live? A Panel Data Multilevel Analysis of Swedish Municipality Level Social Capital on Individual Health-Related Quality of Life

Islam, Kamrul LU ; Merlo, Juan LU orcid ; Kawachi, I ; Lindström, M LU ; Burström, K and Gerdtham, Ulf LU orcid (2006) In Health Economics, Policy and Law 1(3). p.209-235
Abstract
We test whether individual health status is related to area-level social capital measured by rates of voting participation in municipal political elections, controlling for personal characteristics, where health status is measured by mapping responses to interview survey questions into the generic health-related quality of life measure (HRQoL) the EQ-5D in order to derive the health state scores. The analysis is based on unbalanced panel data from Statistic Sweden's Survey of Living Conditions (the ULF survey) and a 3-level multilevel regression analysis, where level 1 consists of a total of 31,585 observations for 24,419 individuals at level 2 nested within 275 Swedish municipalities at level 3. We find that the health state scores... (More)
We test whether individual health status is related to area-level social capital measured by rates of voting participation in municipal political elections, controlling for personal characteristics, where health status is measured by mapping responses to interview survey questions into the generic health-related quality of life measure (HRQoL) the EQ-5D in order to derive the health state scores. The analysis is based on unbalanced panel data from Statistic Sweden's Survey of Living Conditions (the ULF survey) and a 3-level multilevel regression analysis, where level 1 consists of a total of 31,585 observations for 24,419 individuals at level 2 nested within 275 Swedish municipalities at level 3. We find that the health state scores increase significantly with municipality election rates. This result is robust to a number of measurement and specification issues explored in a sensitivity analysis. However, almost all variation in health status exists across individuals (more than 98%), which demonstrates that even if social capital (and other contextual variables) may be significant it is of less importance, at least at the municipality level in Sweden. (Less)
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author
; ; ; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
in
Health Economics, Policy and Law
volume
1
issue
3
pages
209 - 235
publisher
Cambridge University Press
external identifiers
  • wos:000208038600002
  • scopus:38049006128
ISSN
1744-134X
DOI
10.1017/S174413310600301X
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
4a134394-679f-4d8d-9bdf-0dbc89f35eec (old id 1136298)
date added to LUP
2016-04-01 12:01:23
date last changed
2022-04-28 23:28:41
@article{4a134394-679f-4d8d-9bdf-0dbc89f35eec,
  abstract     = {{We test whether individual health status is related to area-level social capital measured by rates of voting participation in municipal political elections, controlling for personal characteristics, where health status is measured by mapping responses to interview survey questions into the generic health-related quality of life measure (HRQoL) the EQ-5D in order to derive the health state scores. The analysis is based on unbalanced panel data from Statistic Sweden's Survey of Living Conditions (the ULF survey) and a 3-level multilevel regression analysis, where level 1 consists of a total of 31,585 observations for 24,419 individuals at level 2 nested within 275 Swedish municipalities at level 3. We find that the health state scores increase significantly with municipality election rates. This result is robust to a number of measurement and specification issues explored in a sensitivity analysis. However, almost all variation in health status exists across individuals (more than 98%), which demonstrates that even if social capital (and other contextual variables) may be significant it is of less importance, at least at the municipality level in Sweden.}},
  author       = {{Islam, Kamrul and Merlo, Juan and Kawachi, I and Lindström, M and Burström, K and Gerdtham, Ulf}},
  issn         = {{1744-134X}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{3}},
  pages        = {{209--235}},
  publisher    = {{Cambridge University Press}},
  series       = {{Health Economics, Policy and Law}},
  title        = {{Does It Really Matter Where You Live? A Panel Data Multilevel Analysis of Swedish Municipality Level Social Capital on Individual Health-Related Quality of Life}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S174413310600301X}},
  doi          = {{10.1017/S174413310600301X}},
  volume       = {{1}},
  year         = {{2006}},
}