Desiderata: Social Networks and Health Inequalities: Which Questions Remain Open?

Abstract“Tell me how much your friends earn, and I’ll tell you if you smoke, what diseases you have and how long your life will be!” With this somewhat pointed statement, we wanted to shed light on the empirically well-confirmed connection between social and health inequalities from the perspective of network research at the beginning of this book (see chapter “Social networks and health inequalities: a new perspective for research”). Social networks are understood here as mediating entities at an intermediate or meso-level, whose structure and function mediate between vertical (income, education, occupational status, etc.) as well as horizontal (e.g., age, gender, ethnic origin) inequalities and health inequalities (e.g., life expectancy, morbidity rates). Besides this mediating influence a moderating relationship wherein social networks amplify or diminish vertical and horizontal inequalities seems to be reasonable.