Egocentric Social Network Structure, Health, and Pro-Social Behaviors in a National Panel Study of Americans

Using a population-based, panel survey, we study how egocentric social networks change over time, and the relationship between egocentric network properties and health and pro-social behaviors. We find that the number of prosocial activities is strongly positively associated with having more friends, or an increase in degree, with approximately 0.04 more prosocial behaviors expected for every friend added. Moreover, having more friends is associated with an improvement in health, while being healthy and prosocial is associated with closer relationships. Specifically, a unit increase in health is associated with an expected 0.45 percentage-point increase in average closeness, while adding a prosocial activity is associated with a 0.46 percentage-point increase in the closeness of one’s relationships. Furthermore, a tradeoff between degree and closeness of social contacts was observed. As the number of close social contacts increases by one, the estimated average closeness of each individual contact decreases by approximately three percentage-points. The increased awareness of the importance of spillover effects in health and health care makes the ascertainment of egocentric social networks a valuable complement to investigations of the relationship between socioeconomic factors and health

Relationships between changes in network measures.

<p>Relationships between changes in network measures.</p

Regressions of individual outcomes on current and lagged network measures.

<p>Regressions of individual outcomes on current and lagged network measures.</p

Changes and transitions in network measures between consecutive waves.

<p>Changes and transitions in network measures between consecutive waves.</p

Egocentric network involving an ego with N = 8 alters labeled A, B, …, H.

<p>For clarity, the left panel shows only the ego-alter ties while the right panel shows only alter-alter ties. Closeness is computed as the average strength of the ego-alter ties (left panel) and dividing by 10 to make the range 0 to 1. Analogously, transitivity is computed as the average strength of the alter-alter ties (right-panel, including the 0 strength null ties that are not depicted) and dividing by 10.</p