Assessing the Impact of Social Capital on Maternal Well-Being

Background and Purpose Social capital is defined as the embedded resources within one’s social network. As defined in this study, social capital is focused on access to individuals able to provide financial or instrumental assistance. Research has suggested that women with children have less access to social capital compared with men. However, less is known on how access to social capital impacts the general well-being of women. To address that gap this study assessed the impact of access to individual-level social capital on maternal well-being in terms of women’s physical and mental health, life satisfaction, and life control.

Methods This study was a secondary analysis of data collected from the 3,166 women participating in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), a longitudinal study of a cohort of mothers who gave birth between 1998-2000. Survey questions were included from the Baseline Wave and follow-up waves 9 and 15. The primary dependent variable was Maternal Well-being based on a previously established five-item scale with questions related to physical and mental health, life satisfaction, and life control. Responses ranged from 1-5, with 1 meaning low maternal well-being and 5 meaning the highest level of maternal well-being. The primary independent variable was Social Capital, based on a previously established four-item scale with questions asking whether the mother could count on someone to loan them $200, provide them a place to live, help with emergency child care, or cosign for a $1,000 loan. Responses ranged from 0-4, with 0 meaning no social capital held and 4 meaning the highest level of held social capital. A generalized ordinal logistic model was estimated to account for violations of the proportional odds assumption using multiply data. Model covariates included age, income, education, employment status, welfare use, and economic need.

Results Greater access to social capital positively impacted maternal wellbeing. Women with more social capital were likely to report being in one of the higher categories of maternal well-being. However, while the impact was greatest at the lower levels of maternal well-being, (AOR=3.88, p<0.001) women with more social capital were more likely to endorse higher scores on maternal well-being across the entire range of that scale. For example, women with high social capital were over twice as likely (AOR=2.08, p<0.001) to endorse the highest level of maternal well-being compared with women with lower social capital. Significant and positive effects on maternal well-being were also found for Latina women (AOR=1.34, p<0.01), women with a college education (AOR=1.83, p<0.001), and women with incomes over $30,000 per year (AOR=1.64, p<0.001) whereas welfare use (AOR=0.61, p<0.001), economic need (AOR=0.22, p<0.001), and being over 50 (AOR=0.61, p<0.001) were associated with lower maternal well-being.

Conclusions and Implications Our findings suggest that the social capital accessible by mothers has positive effects on their well-being and is especially important for women at lower levels of maternal well-being. Social workers developing programming for mothers might focus on the identification and strengthening of the mother's social capital, especially for mothers with extremely low maternal well-being.