Individual Heterogeneity in the Association Between Social Participation and Self-rated Health: A Panel Study on BHPS

In the last ten years, interest in social capital as a mechanism for understanding actual and perceived health has been increasing among economists. Although the pathways by which social participation, as a dimension of social capital, may have a positive effect on health seem clearly identified, empirical evidence is mixed because the lack of longitudinal data makes it difficult to deal with individual heterogeneity. Our study investigates the relationship between social participation (as measured by being a member, active, or both a member and active) in associations and self-rated health in a panel setting, using the first five waves of the British Household Panel Survey from 1991 to 1995 (unbalanced panel N = 45,745). To take into account heterogeneity, we implement three different kinds of estimations for fixed effects, two have been largely used in the literature and one method was recently proposed by Baetschmann et al. (J R Stat Soc Ser A 178: 685–703, 2015). We find positive effects but weak significance for active membership. When we control for reverse causality, using lagged independent variables and membership in specific organizations, we obtain more detailed and in some cases significant results.