Abstract
The concept of social capital has been dramatically diffused not only to many academic fields but also to many policy areas. One of the reasons of applying of this concept could be the multiple dimensions of social capital and its adaptability to many fields. There are lots of debates and discussions on the concept of social capital in the fields dealing with health and illness. Some researchers of public health, specifically of social epidemiology have been interested in social determinants of health for about two decades. Among them income distribution have been the one of the most popular issues and the researchers debated its effects on population health in the developed countries. The way of income distribution has a possibility to apply the concept of social capital to this research field in that it could be called a ecological factor. And focusing on the area differences in health could be one of the impetuses to encourage the researchers to think of the relationship between social capital and health. When thinking about the regional differences in health, it is necessary to distinguish between compositional effects contextual effects on health conditions among specific regions. The concept of contextual effect is a kind of a key concept of familiarity to that of social capital. In this article, the background and trend of the development of social capital in this field and several typical empirical data are reviewed briefly. And the implication of the concept of social capital to policy fields, especially social welfare could be examined.
