Impact of social capital on child nutrition status: three villages case of Oudomxay province in Lao People's Democratic Republic

Background: The role of social capital on development, with trust, norm and networks as its attributes, has been all the more recognized to generate benefit for development. Social capital also has a positive role in improving child health. With its poor ranking on health indicators among Southeast Asian countries, the health sector in Lao PDR is set as a priority sector that urgently requires improvement. In this sector, child health is of particular significance. This paper examines social capital, in the form of kinship network, and its impacton child health outcomes such as nutrition status. Methods: Following the general definition of social capital, specifically of bonding social capital, kinship network is used in this paper as a proxy of social capital. From field survey data conducted in early 2010 in 3 villages in the Northern Province of the Lao People's Democratic Republic, a Probit regression analysis is applied to 214 samples of children under 10 years old for stunting and underweight cases. Results: It is found that kinship network as social capital plays an important role in reducing stunted and underweight levels of children in these 3 villages. The estimated coefficient for social capital shows that children, who aside from their family nucleus are surrounded bymore families of relatives in the village, are less likely to be stunted and underweight by 1.8% and 1.5% at significant levels of 10% and 5%, respectively. Conclusion: Social capital is one of the mechanisms that people in rural areas of Lao PDR use as a buffer from economic and health shocks. Based on analysis, kinship network shows an impact on improving child health status, especially for long-term child health. Also, as society moves toward urbanization, a family network tends to be smaller and more independent. Thus, a challenge for policymakers is to create an appropriate support mechanism to substitute or complement this traditional social capital.