Abstract
Literature on social capital has long considered whether and how social capital is protective against various risk behaviors, including age at sexual debut. However, much of this literature uses data from wealthy countries in the Global North and is often cross-sectional, dampening generalizability. In this paper, we employ longitudinal South African data from adolescents in the Cape Area Panel Study to examine the longitudinal link between social capital and age at sexual debut. We first examine the overall relationship between age at sexual debut and social capital and then examine how the relationship differs by race. Results suggest that, on average, each additional activity is associated with an approximate 2 month delay in age at sexual debut. However, we observed steep racial differences. For Africans, the link between social capital and age at sexual debut was not significant, while the results for Coloureds and Whites were. For Coloureds, each additional activity translated into a 3 month delay in sexual debut, while for Whites we found a 4 month delay. We found no evidence of sex differences. Taken together, these results suggest that social capital is not equally efficacious for all South African adolescents. For Africans, social capital does not appear to be linked to age at sexual debut. In contrast, more social capital activities appear to be linked to delayed sexual debut, most particularly for Whites.
Highlights
Since the emergence of the construct a few decades ago, social capital has become a prominent subject of study across multiple disciplines
More social capital activities appear to be linked to delayed sexual debut, most for Whites
The results of this paper indicate that adolescent social capital should be strongly considered when making policy and programming decisions in South Africa
Summary
Since the emergence of the construct a few decades ago, social capital has become a prominent subject of study across multiple disciplines. Much of the research indicates this influence to be positive, with social capital acquisition predicting favorable outcomes and protecting against harmful ones. This may be especially salient for youth, as social relationships gain new meaning (Nickerson and Nagle 2006) and problem behavior peaks (Arnett 1992, 1999; Steinberg 2007). Risky sexual behaviors are detrimental to both physical and mental health (Hallfors et al 2005; Sandfort et al 2008; Stöckl et al 2013), and can result in events that alter an individual’s life trajectory, such as pregnancy. Adolescent sexual behavior is an especially important issue in South Africa due to a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS and teenage pregnancy (UNAIDS 2020), and while sexual encounters may be at least somewhat normative in adolescence, debuting too early can put youths even more at risk for these and other adverse sexual outcomes (Harrison et al 2005)
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