Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction to the economics of social capital and health / Sherman Folland and Lorenzo Rocco -- What is social capital and how does it work to improve health? / Sherman Folland -- Investing in social capital / Sherman Folland, Kaarboe, and Islam -- Social capital : an economic perspective / LaPorte -- How social capital arises in populations / Sherman Folland and Iversen -- Measures of social capital / Richard Scheffler and Yumna Bahgat -- The empirics of social capital / Lorenzo Rocco and Elena Fumagalli -- Social capital and health in low- and middle-income countries / Jose Anchorena, Lucas Ronconi, and Sachiko Ozawa -- Social capital and smoking / Lorenzo Rocco and Beatrice d'Hombres -- Policy implications / Eline Aas. This book defines the field of social capital and health. Over the last two decades, there has been a recognition of the importance of social capital and its impact on the health of those in that community. The purpose of this book is to show the growth in the field of social capital and health and to expose readers to a variety of approaches in order to think about and model the question of how health can be improved by investments in community social capital as well as by individual social capital. An outstanding set of papers will be presented by authors from the United States, as well as from Europe and Asia. These papers are cutting-edge and explore the mechanisms through which social capital affects health. The papers also present the most recent empirical work and discuss the policy implications of their findings. This is a landmark book which will make the study of social capital and its impact on health a major area of research in the coming decade.