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Material as well as non-material resources have been found to be associated with population health and risk of disease. 1 - 4 Studies on such resources that are typically connected to an individual's social position, namely financial means and interpersonal support, often draw on theories of capital. Measures of economic and social capital have been used successfully in health research. 5 - 8 Today, income, as a key indicator of economic capital, continues to be associated with health and risk of disease. 9 10 Also, social capital, measured for instance through membership in support-providing networks, has been shown to be associated with health outcomes. 11 - 13 Recently, however, empirical studies have appeared linking health inequality to cultural capital, 14 15 and have argued that culture-based activities, knowledge and perceptions present a unique form of health-relevant capital. However, the contribution of those studies to the current discourse in social epidemiology remains limited for two reasons. First, they lack a specific definition of health-relevant cultural capital. Yet, such a definition appears mandatory for meaningful measurement of cultural capital in empirical studies on health inequalities. Second, regarding the multidimensional effects of social inequality, 2 4 most studies attempt to filter out the unique contribution of culture-based factors by statistical adjustment for education or income. Those approaches can, however, be criticised for neglect of the more complex interactions between cultural, social and economic capital. In an attempt to close this gap, the present paper starts with a short summary of the findings from recent studies addressing the associations between cultural resources and health inequalities. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's original notion of cultural capital, 16 17 I then lay out those properties and functions of cultural capital that are instrumental in specifically addressing health inequalities. The paper adds to the emerging literature on cultural capital a theoretically derived definition of health-relevant cultural capital and illustrates the role of capital interaction in the social reproduction of health inequalities.
CULTURAL CAPITAL IN HEALTH RESEARCH
The general term "capital" refers to resources generated by labour. Cultural capital can be broadly defined as people's symbolic and informational resources for action. 18 Those resources (eg values, behavioural norms and knowledge) are acquired mostly through social learning, with learning conditions varying across the social classes,...