Abstract

OBJECTIVE. Establish the relationship of social capital that older women have to confront the health care with a set of variables considered relevant: age, marital status, education, family structure, religion and membership of organizations of the elderly. METHODS. Correlational study, implemented in a non-experimental design. Simple random sampling with a maximum estimation error of 5% and a confidence level of 99%, assuming maximum variance, were selected 113 elderly women. A survey of the Social Capital Personal scale was applied between October 6 and November 16, 2014. An analysis of psychometric properties of the instrument through Cronbach's alpha (0.863) was performed, Statistical tests of mean differences and correlations and scatter descriptive statisticians were calculated. RESULTS. 1 in 2 older women were between 64 and 73 years, with an average score of 23.9 points social capital. The bonding social capital was higher than bridging social capital. It was found that the strongest correlation was between the capital binding and age (r = -0.432 (p <0.01), ie, the older lower capital binding. Catholic women achieved a lower average score than evangelical (23.3 points vs 25.8 points, p = 0.000). Women with higher education had higher scores of social capital, a situation that is related to better social status and availability of social resources. Women had lower household coreless bonding social capital (11.01 points) and single-parent households without children the lower bridging social capital (8.29 points). CONCLUSION. Precarious levels of capital are related to categories of variables that predict greater health risk, such as age, marital status and family structure.