@article{ref1,
title="Social capital and human mortality: explaining the rural paradox with county‐level mortality data",
journal="Rural sociology",
year="2011",
author="Yang, Tse‐Chuan and Jensen, Leif and Haran, Murali",
volume="76",
number="3",
pages="347-374",
abstract="The &quot;rural paradox&quot; refers to standardized mortality rates in rural areas that are unexpectedly low in view of well-known economic and infrastructural disadvantages there. We explore this paradox by incorporating social capital, a promising explanatory factor that has seldom been incorporated into residential mortality research. We do so while being attentive to spatial dependence, a statistical problem often ignored in mortality research. Analyzing data for counties in the contiguous United States, we find that: (1) the rural paradox is confirmed with both metro-nonmetro and rural-urban continuum codes, (2) social capital significantly reduces the impacts of residence on mortality after controlling for race and ethnicity and socioeconomic covariates, (3) this attenuation is greater when a spatial perspective is imposed on the analysis, (4) social capital is negatively associated with mortality at the county level, and (5) spatial dependence is strongly in evidence. A spatial approach is necessary in county-level analyses such as ours to yield unbiased estimates and optimal model fit.<p /><p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0036-0112",
doi="10.1111/j.1549-0831.2011.00055.x",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1549-0831.2011.00055.x"
}