Social participation and self-rated psychological health

Although social capital have been hypothesized to have positive influence on psychological health, few papers found a relationship between social capital dimensions and psychological wellbeing. This study investigates the longitudinal relationship between social participation in associations and self-rated psychological health. The paper uses five waves of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) that follows the same individuals between 1991 and 1995. Ordered logit fixed effect methods have been used to study the longitudinal link between structural social capital (being member, active, and both member and active in associations) and self-rated psychological health assessed by single items of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) controlling for age, marital status, household size, number of children, education, income, economic status, number of visit to GP or family doctor. The paper shows that being both member and active in associations is linked to all “positive” items of self-rated psychological health and to two main “negative” items of psychological wellbeing. Instead, being only member or only active in associations have no statistical effect on single items of the GHQ-12, with few exceptions. Findings highlight the protective role of being both member and active in associations against poor psychological health outcomes.