Social Trust and Health: a Perspective of Urban-Rural Comparison in China

In studies on social capital and health, trust is usually treated as a one-dimensional, rather than a multidimensional, conception. Based on the data from the Chinese General Social Survey of 2010, which included 3866 cases, this study examined the associations between four trust forms and two health outcomes through hierarchical linear models in urban versus rural China. Results showed that at the individual level, general trust was positively related to rural residents’ physical health and urban residents’ psychological health; institution trust was positively associated with psychological health in both urban and rural China but negatively related to urban residents’ physical health; weak-tie trust brought more psychological health for both urban and rural residents, but intimacy trust was only positively associated with the psychological health of urban residents. At the county level, general trust had a detrimental effect on rural residents’ physical health, whereas institution trust had a detrimental effect on urban residents’ psychological health. Living in a county with more weak-tie trust, individuals with less weak-tie trust were less likely to be healthy. Therefore, sufficient healthcare and education resources are needed to be supplied, especially in rural China, to exert the positive effect of various trust forms on health.