Research PaperThe impact on social capital of mobility disability and weight status: The Stockholm Public Health Cohort
Section snippets
Sample selection
Data were obtained from the Stockholm Public Health Cohort (SPHC). More information on the original sampling and responses is available online.18
We included 19,633 individuals aged 18–64 years who responded to questionnaires in 2002, 2007 and 2010. From this sample, we excluded those who did not answer the questions on height and weight (17%), long-term illness (1.2%), and mobility disability in 2002 and 2010 (1.6%). Weight status was established at baseline by computing body mass index (BMI)
Results
In our study sample, we observed 516 individuals who had mobility disability in both 2002 and 2010 in combination with overweight or obesity (data not shown). Data on the baseline characteristics of the various groups are shown in Table 1. People with mobility disability were more often female, older, non-Swedish, and with a lower education, participated less often in social activities, voted less in elections, and more often reported low trust in institutions and authorities and in other
Main findings
We found no changes over time between the mobility disability and weight-status groups in structural social capital (participation in social activities, and voting in elections) compared with normal-weight people without mobility disability. However, concerning cognitive social capital (as measured by trust in individuals, and trust in authorities and institutions), obese people with mobility disability comprised the group with the largest decrease in trust in institutions and authorities over
Conclusion
This study gives us further understanding of the longitudinal development of social capital in groups of people who are normal weight, overweight or obese, and with or without mobility disability. The study explored both structural and cognitive social capital, but we only observed a clear worsening over time in cognitive social capital among normal-weight, overweight and obese people with mobility disability, and also obese people without mobility disability, compared with normal-weight people
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Cited by (1)
Funding: This research was supported by grant 2010-1828 from the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research, according to Finn Rasmussen. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research. We hereby declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
Abstract: Review oral session at ECO 2013: http://www.karger.com/Article/Pdf/250038.