Measuring Social Capital in Hamilton, Ontario Peter Kitchen • Allison Williams • Dylan Simone Accepted: 30 March 2012 / Published online: 8 May 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 Abstract Social capital has been studied by academics for more than 20 years and within the past decade there has been an explosion of growth in research linking social capital to health. This paper investigates social capital in Hamilton, Ontario by way of a telephone survey of 1,002 households in three neighbourhood groups representing high, mixed and low socio-economic status (SES). A Social Capital Measurement Tool is proposed as a straightforward way to account for differences in social capital perceptions and actions among residents. Consistent with the literature, the paper found that there was a strong association between social capital perceptions and health, particularly mental health and life stress. Social capital was greater in the high and mixed SES neighbourhoods and much weaker in the low SES neighbourhoods. With respect to social capital actions, both vol- unteering and voting was associated with positive overall health and mental health. Finally, the paper identified the social capital ‘elite’—respondents with high or above average perceptions and who participated in the two social capital actions—voting and volun- teering. Prominent among the social capital elite in Hamilton is the ‘health wealthy’ senior, a positive development for the continued social well-being of the city. Keywords Social capital  Health  Socio-economic status  Place of residence 1 Introduction The idea of social capital has been studied by social scientists for several decades. Debate has emerged among academics on how best to define and measure the concept and within P. Kitchen (&) McMaster Institute of Environment and Health, McMaster University, 1280 Main St. W, Hamilton, ON L8S 2K1, Canada e-mail: kitchen@mcmaster.ca A. Williams  D. Simone School of Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster University, 1280 Main St. W, Hamilton, ON L8S 2K1, Canada 123 Soc Indic Res (2012) 108:215–238 DOI 10.1007/s11205-012-0063-3