Immigrants in Western Europe typically exhibit lower levels of subjective well-being than their native-born counterparts. We argue that because of disruptions in social networks and linguistic and cultural barriers to immigrant integration, social capital is a likely source of immigrant-native inequality in well-being. Using data from the first five waves of the European Social Survey, we find that social capital, measured by several indicators of informal social connections and generalized trust, explains more than half of the non-Western immigrant-native gap in subjective well-being that remains after adjusting for the standard predictors of well-being. Social capital also significantly reduces the smaller Western immigrant-native gap. In addition, we examine potential differential returns to social capital and find that immigrants and natives benefit equally from social capital.

Objectives. While a growing body of literature investigates the role of social capital in the labor market outcomes of immigrants, the verdict is still out on whether or not reliance on social networks enhances or constrains labor market performance. This study explores the effect of relying on social ties to find a job on the hourly earnings and occupational prestige of new legal immigrants in the United States. Methods. Utilizing data from the New Immigrant Survey 2003 cohort, the effect on occupational outcomes of relying on social ties to locate a job is estimated using both ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and propensity score matching (PSM), to minimize observable selection bias. Propensity score matching is used to identify the treatment effect of using social contacts by comparing the outcomes of closely matched treatment and control groups. Results. Both OLS and PSM estimates indicate that using a close contact to find a job has a detrimental effect on earnings and occupational prestige. The effect of social capital, however, varies across groups. Particularly, while social capital has little or no effect on the labor market outcomes of black and Hispanic immigrants, it has a detrimental effect on the occupational prestige of Asian and white immigrants (the effect being stronger for Asians than for whites). Conclusion. Social capital research on immigrants' outcomes should, therefore, take caution in generalizing from group-specific research, as these findings point to contextual labor market effects of social capital.Immigrants are a rapidly growing demographic group in most industrialized democracies (Segal, Elliot, and Mayadas, 2010). In the United States, where foreign-born individuals makeup about 13 percent of the total population, a third of annual growth in population and about half of the growth in the labor force is attributable to immigration (Massey, 2010). As a result, interdisciplinary research on immigrants and their integration into host societies continues to be an important part of social science research. Numerous studies have examined factors that influence the economic integration of immigrants, particularly the determinants of labor market assimilation of newcomers. Studies have looked at such outcomes as self-employment (e.

The literature on immigrant health has by and large focused on the relationship between acculturation (often measured by a shift in language use) and health outcomes, paying less attention to network processes and the implications of interethnic integration for long-term health. This study frames English-language use among immigrants in the United States as a reflection of bridging social capital that is indicative of social network diversity. Using longitudinal data on self-rated health and the incidence of chronic conditions from the New Immigrant Survey (2003, 2007), I examine the contemporaneous and longitudinal associations between interethnic social capital and health. The results show evidence for a positive long-term effect of linguistic integration on health status, but no cross-sectional associations were observed. Overall, these results highlight the possible role of network processes in linking English-language use with immigrant health and the time-dependent nature of the relationship between linguistic integration and health status.

Clinics need to focus more on the recommended logistics and processes to ensure that patients receive the entire HPV vaccination series. Survey results indicate that clinics are not consistently implementing the recommended best practices to ensure that vaccination series are completed.

This dissertation presents three empirical studies on the distribution and role of social capital among immigrants in the United States. Using data from two national datasetsthe New Immigrant Survey (NIS 2003, 2007) and the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS 2000)-it examines the implications of social capital for immigrants' social and economic integration. In doing so, it addresses several key limitations within migration research. The first limitation it addresses is the focus of prior research on migrants' co-ethnic (bonding) social capital and the limited research on immigrants' "bridging" social capital and distributional inequities across immigrant groups. Second, while most research has focused on the role of social capital in economic integration, relatively little is known about the short-run and long-term implications of immigrants' social capital for their health and well-being. Third, prior research has generally focused on specific immigrant groups, particularly Hispanic and Asian immigrants, and it is unclear if prior findings are generalizable to immigrants overall or if they are simply capturing group and/or context-specific effects of social capital. This dissertation includes three studies that provide pieces of evidence that address these limitations and contribute to the migration literature. In the first study, I explore the link between race, immigration status and social network diversity. Using data on personal network characteristics from the SCCBS (2000), I examine the role of race and immigration status in the distribution of ethnicity and status-bridging social capital. Findings confirm the double disadvantage of minority and outsider status for minority immigrants when it comes to access to network diversity, and group (i.e. race) differences in native-immigrant v gaps in access to ethnicity-bridging social capital. The findings also show there is an intersectional disadvantage in network quality that is explained away by group differences in network ethnic diversity, and that race and immigrant status are a factor in determining the return from network ethnic diversity in terms of network quality, which is reflective of the extant socioeconomic stratification system in the United States. In the second study, I use a nationally representative data of immigrants from the NIS (2003), to examine the link between reliance of new immigrants on "bonding" social capital for job search and two indicators of labor market performance: earnings and occupational prestige. I find that while using a family or relative to find a job generally has a negative effect on both earnings and occupational prestige, this effect is not shared across all immigrants, which explains inconsistent findings in prior studies of the role of co-ethnic social capital in the labor market outcomes of Hispanic and Asian immigrants. In the third study, I turn my attention to the immigrant health literature, which has largely focused on the acculturation-health relationship and largely ignores the significanc...