Social capital and the spread of covid-19: Insights from european countries

We investigate the effect of social capital on health outcomes during the Covid-19 pandemic in independent analyses for Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. Exploiting detailed geographical variation within countries, we show that a one standard-deviation increase in social capital leads to between 14% and 34% fewer Covid-19 cases per capita accumulated from mid-March until end of June 2020, as well as between 6% and 35% fewer excess deaths per capita. Our results highlight the positive health returns of strengthening social capital.

Automated summary

The study found that increasing social capital leads to significantly fewer Covid-19 cases and excess deaths during the pandemic, highlighting the positive health impact of strengthening social capital.