Article |
No association of neighbourhood volunteerism with mortality in New Zealand: a national multilevel cohort study
1 Department of Public Health, Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Otago, New Zealand.
2 Department of Psychological Medicine, Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Otago, New Zealand.
* Corresponding author. PO Box 7343, Wellington, New Zealand. E-mail: tony.blakely{at}otago.ac.nz.
Background The association of social capital with health and mortality is contentious, and empirical findings are inconsistent. This study tests the association of neighbourhood-level volunteerism with mortality.
Methods Cohort study of 1996 New Zealand census respondents aged 25–74 years (4.75 million person years) using multilevel Poisson regression analyses. Neighbourhood (average population 2034) measures included indices of social capital (volunteering activities for all census respondents) and deprivation.
Results Adjusting for just age and marital status, the mortality rate ratios for people living in the quintile of neighbourhoods with the lowest compared with highest volunteerism were 1.16 (95% confidence interval 1.08–1.24) and 1.09 (1.01–1.18), for males and females, respectively. Adjusting for potential individual-level and neighbourhood-level socioeconomic confounders reduced the rate ratios to 0.94 (0.88–1.01) and 0.92 (0.85–1.01), respectively. There was no significant association with any cause of death, including suicide [rate ratios 0.89 (0.64–1.22) and 0.57 (0.31–1.05), respectively]. Restricting the analyses to only those census respondents living at their census night address for five or more years, and therefore ‘exposed’ to that level of volunteerism for a longer period, did not substantially alter findings.
Conclusions This study, one of the largest multilevel studies yet, found no statistically significant independent association of a structural measure of neighbourhood social capital with mortality—including suicide. Assuming social features of neighbourhoods are important determinants of health, future research should examine other features (e.g. social fragmentation) and other outcomes (e.g. behaviour).
Keywords Mortality, suicide, neighbourhoods, multilevel study, social capital, volunteerism
Accepted 4 April 2006
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  R Hiscock, J Pearce, R Barnett, G Moon, and V Daley Do smoking cessation programmes influence geographical inequalities in health? An evaluation of the impact of the PEGS programme in Christchurch, New Zealand Tob. Control, October 1, 2009; 18(5): 371 - 376. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 C. van Hooijdonk, M. Droomers, I. M Deerenberg, J. P Mackenbach, and A. E Kunst The diversity in associations between community social capital and health per health outcome, population group and location studied Int. J. Epidemiol., December 1, 2008; 37(6): 1384 - 1392. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 J C Sapag, M Aracena, L Villarroel, F Poblete, C Berrocal, R Hoyos, M Martinez, and I Kawachi Social capital and self-rated health in urban low income neighbourhoods in Chile J Epidemiol Community Health, September 1, 2008; 62(9): 790 - 792. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
I. Kawachi Commentary: Social capital and health: making the connections one step at a time Int. J. Epidemiol., August 1, 2006; 35(4): 989 - 993. [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|