Health & Place 9 (2003) 33–44 Neighborhood differences in social capital: a compositional artifact or a contextual construct? S.V. Subramanian a,b, *, Kimberly A. Lochner b , Ichiro Kawachi a,b a Department of Health and Social Behavior, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, 7th Floor, Boston, MA 02115-6096, USA b Harvard Center for Society and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115-6096, USA Received 12 January 2002; received in revised form 18 April 2002; accepted 25 May 2002 Abstract Assessment of social capital at the neighborhood level is often based on aggregating individual perceptions of trust and reciprocity. Individual perceptions, meanwhile, are influenced through a range of individual attributes. This paper examines the socioeconomic and demographic attributes that systematically correlate with individual perception of social capital and determines the extent to which such attributes account for neighborhood differences in social capital. Using improved multilevel modeling procedures, we ascertain the extent to which differences in social capital perception can be ascribed to true neighborhood-level variations. The analysis is based on the 1994–95 Community Survey of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN). The response measure is based on survey respondent’s perceptions of whether people in their neighborhood can be trusted. The results suggest that even after accounting for individual demographic (age, sex, race, marital status) and socioeconomic characteristics (income, education), significant neighborhood differences remain in individual perceptions of trust, substantiating the notion of social capital as a true contextual construct. r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Social capital; Trust; Neighborhood clusters; Contextual differences; Multilevel methods; US Introduction The role that social networks, social support play in shaping population health has been well established (House and Kahn, 1985). However, the interest on the link between social capital and health is more recent (Hawe and Shiell, 2000; Lomas, 1998). While the two are not mutually exclusive domains of investigation, it is important to differentiate social capital from social networks and support (Harpam et al., 2002). Social capital is typically seen as a part of the societal structure, while social networks and support are often conceptua- lized at the level of individuals. With the growing recognition of the importance of the social environment for health (Macintyre, 2000; Marmot, 1998), there is a keen interest in exploring the possible connections between social capital (considered as one of the key components of social environment) and the health of populations. Following this, recent studies have argued that living in an area with high levels of social capital is strongly associated with individual well-being in general and health in particular (Berkman et al., 2000; Coleman, 1988; Kawachi et al., 1997a; Sampson et al., 1997). Using Putnam’s (1993,2000) operationalization of social capital, Kawachi et al. (1997b) demonstrated significant links between trust, reciprocity and membership of civic associations at the US state level and population *Corresponding author. Department of Health and Social Behavior, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, 7th Floor, Boston, MA 02115-6096, USA. Tel.: +1- 617-432-6299; fax: +1-617-432-3123. E-mail address: svsubram@hsph.harvard.edu (S.V. Subramanian). 1353-8292/03/$-see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S1353-8292(02)00028-X