Social capital and health in European welfare regimes: a multilevel approach

It has been suggested that welfare state characteristics are important for the creation of social trust and moreover that trust is related to health. However, the relationship between social capital and health has not previously been analysed from a welfare state perspective. This article therefore examines how welfare regimes, trust and self-rated health are related, primarily with multilevel logistic regressions. The findings suggest large variations in trust between European welfare regimes and a strong association between trust and health at population level. An association was also found between the post-socialist regime and individual health. This association persisted after adjustment for several confounders/mediators but turned non-significant after adjustment for contextual trust. This suggests that social trust might account for the association. The results further indicate that contexts with low trust, such as the post-socialist context, are somewhat more detrimental for the health of distrustful individuals. In overall terms, these findings suggest that contextual social trust could explain health differences between European welfare regimes.