Bridging the Divide: Does Social Capital Moderate the Impact of Polarization on Health?

• Author: Costas Panagopoulos,Timothy Fraser,Daniel P. Aldrich,Daniel Kim,David Hummel
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211034561
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Date: 01 September 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211034561

Political Research Quarterly

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211034561

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Introduction

Over the last two decades, partisan polarization has inten-

sified in America, sowing division in national politics and

local communities (Iyengar et al. 2019; Levendusky 2009;

Webster and Abramowitz 2017). Polarized political views

increasingly manifest as affective polarization, that is, the

tendency for individuals to view members of their own

party favorably but see the worst in members of the oppos-

ing party (Iyengar et al. 2019; Iyengar and Westwood

2014). Over a similar period, aggregate-level studies have

linked county-level presidential election voting prefer-

ences to changing health outcomes, where support for

Republican candidates correlate with higher mortality

rates (Bilal, Knapp, and Cooper 2017; Bor 2017), greater

opioid use (Goodwin et al. 2018), lower vaccination rates

(Bernstein et al. 2016), and higher obesity rates (Shin and

McCarthy 2013). Furthermore, individual-level studies

suggest increasing political polarization is linked to worse

poor overall health (Nayak et al. 2021). However, chang-

ing health outcomes in local communities have also been

connected to the changing structure of social capital—the

social ties in a community that enable trust, reciprocity,

and collective action—with higher levels of trust in

neighbors and residents associated with better physical

health, lower levels of chronic stress (Fujiwara and

Kawachi 2008; Lee and Kim 2013), better quality of life

(Kim and Kawachi 2007), and lower mortality rates

(Aldrich 2019). These findings raise the compelling pos-

sibility that if political polarization and social capital are

both associated with health outcomes, building a robust

social network could moderate the impact of political

polarization on an individual’s health.

This study examines physical and mental health out-

comes using a survey of 2,752 U.S. adults conducted

between December 23, 2019, and January 3, 2020, probing

the interaction effects of mass polarization and different

1034561PRQXXX10.1177/10659129211034561Political Research QuarterlyPanagopoulos et al.

research-article2021

1Department of Political Science, Northeastern University, Boston,

MA, USA

2Bouvé College of Health Sciences & School of Public Policy and

Urban Affairs, Northeastern University, Boston, MA USA

3Department of Economics, Northeastern University, Boston, MA

USA

Corresponding Author:

Timothy Fraser, Department of Political Science, Northeastern

University, 960A Renaissance Park, 360 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA

02115, USA.

Email: timothy.fraser.1@gmail.com

Bridging the Divide: Does Social

Capital Moderate the Impact of

Polarization on Health?

Costas Panagopoulos1, Timothy Fraser1,

Daniel P. Aldrich1, Daniel Kim2, and David Hummel3

Abstract

Rising partisan polarization in the American public over the last decade has been linked to stress and anxiety, raising

questions about how communities and public health experts should respond. As the strength of an individual’s social

network correlates with better health outcomes, could building a diverse set of connections moderate the effect

of political polarization on an individual’s health? This study examines the role of social capital as a key intervening

variable in the relationship between polarization and health. Drawing on a nationally representative survey of 2,752

U.S. residents conducted in December 2019 compared with county-level data, we use negative binomial, logit, and

gamma models to examine the interaction between indicators of political polarization and bonding, bridging, and

linking social capital on physical and mental health outcomes. We find consistent evidence that bonding social ties

intervene to improve the physical and mental health of individuals in polarized communities, while bridging ties are

related to worse health for politically isolated residents. By highlighting the relationship between polarization, social

networks, and health, our findings shed light on how public health experts, and policymakers can improve health

outcomes in polarized communities.

Keywords

politics, polarization, partisanship, social capital, health impacts, survey

2022, Vol. 75(3) 875–891

Article

876 Political Research Quarterly 75(3)

forms of social capital on self-reported days of poor physi-

cal and mental health per month. By counting the number

of days in the last month that a person reports poor physical

health, or alternatively, poor mental health, a commonly

used health measure in the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor

Surveillance System (BRFSS), we can approximate an

individual’s overall quality of health. We hypothesize that

respondents in polarized communities will have worse

health outcomes depending on the types of social ties they

have built. If they have strong bonding social capital, or

close in-group ties built among members of the same race,

religion, class, gender, or age group (McPherson, Smith-

Lovin, and Cook 2001), we hypothesize they will have

worse health outcomes. Similarly, if respondents in polar-

ized communities have strong bridging social capital,

which refers to intergroup ties between members of differ-

ent racial, religious, class, gender, or age groups (Aldrich

2012; Putnam 2000), we hypothesize that this will also

lead to better health outcomes. This is because while bond-

ing ties connect individuals to echo chambers of similar

people who may sit far from the median position they

encounter in their daily lives, bridging ties connect them

with a diverse pool of opinions and viewpoints and help

them feel accepted and valued in their community. We find

evidence that respondents living in politically polarized

areas with weaker bonding networks of social trust tend to

report more days of poor physical and mental health per

month, while, in contrast to our expectations, politically

isolated respondents experience worse physical health

despite strong diverse, bridging, social networks.

This study makes three main contributions to the litera-

ture. First, while past studies examined aggregate-level

associations between partisanship and health (Bernstein

et al. 2016; Bilal, Knapp, and Cooper 2017; Inglehart and

Norris 2016), our data allow us to triangulate any such

effects at the individual level. Second, while past studies

investigated the effects of political partisanship and polar-

ization or social capital on health separately (Bor 2017;

Fujiwara and Kawachi 2008; Guo 2016), this study exam-

ines them together, where individuals’ social networks and

community partisan divides interact to shape health. Third,

this study builds on past findings about the Janus-faced

nature of social capital in community resilience (Aldrich

2012; Aldrich and Meyer 2015), showing that not all forms

of social capital interact substantially with polarization to

improve health. Instead, bonding social ties have the most

consistent booster effect on health outcomes, while bridg-

ing ties appear to exert more nuanced effects, and linking

ties were found to be less effective. By highlighting the

relationship between polarization, social networks, and

health, scholars, public health experts, and policymakers

can use community social capital improvement projects as

an intervention against declining health outcomes due to

polarization.

Background and Hypotheses

This study examines how political polarization and social

capital interact to shape individuals’ physical and mental

health. Below, we review the extant literature on how (1)

health conditions and demographics, (2) policy, (3) parti-

san health behaviors, (4) political polarization, and (5)

social networks shape health outcomes.

Health Conditions and Social Determinants of

Health

The most common explanations for divergent health

outcomes are health conditions, behaviors, and the

social determinants of health. First, tobacco consump-

tion, obesity, poor diet, alcohol and drug use, type II

diabetes, and high blood pressure were found to be the

top six causes of change in American life spans between

1990 and 2016 (Murray et al. 2013). Second, deaths of

despair and opioid-related deaths have heavily increased

mortality in high intensity drug trafficking areas in

Appalachia and New Mexico (Monnat 2018).

Third, epidemiologists now take seriously the

effects of the social determinants of health, which

refers to upstream societal factors including social and

economic conditions in which we are born, live, work

and play. These conditions, along with gender, race/

ethnicity, and socioeconomic position, shape our

behaviors, biology, and levels of stress, and ultimately

our levels of physical and mental health (Commission

on Social Determinants of Health, World Health

Organization 2008; Kim 2021). Race dramatically

shifts life expectancy, largely due to race-related dis-

crimination in work and health care access, health out-

comes associated with racial profiling and incarceration,

environmental exposure to stress and pollutants, life-

style differences, and long-term inequalities in educa-

tion and poverty (Sondik et al. 2010). Likewise, age

and gender shape health as well; areas with more

elderly residents experience greater mortality rates,

while women tend to have greater life expectancy than

men (Sondik et al. 2010). Finally, socioeconomic sta-

tus (SES) also shapes health outcomes, via poverty,

education, and SES-related stress (Mackenbach et al.

2017). An analysis of American Association of Retired

Persons (AARP) members from 1925 to 1945 showed

that educational attainment dramatically boosts over-

all health (Fletcher 2015), while increases in long-term

unemployment are associated with increased mortality,

due to stresses from covering expenses for family

when unemployed (Bender and Theodossiou 2014).

These social and economic conditions also impact

access to health care, which can also shape individual

behavior and stress.