*5.2. Conclusions*

Our results sugges<sup>t</sup> that social capital is reflective of mental health both at the individual and community level. We have employed four cognitive-structural and horizontal-vertical constructs to comprehensively measure social capital in Chinese contexts and empirically test for observations across samples from rural and urban Chinese population segments. The results support the argumen<sup>t</sup> that in general, individual social capital holds a positive association with self-rated mental health in China. This study also finds that a significant proportion of the total variation in individual's self-rated mental health status can be explained by differences at the community level. Those living in areas with low civic trust social capital have high excess risk of poor self-rated mental health. On the contrary, urban areas offer disagreement on the structural dimension measured through community-civic participation index, offering a negative association. An explanation for this has been based on the network resources approach. The likelihood ratio tests further support our conclusions that the impact of both individual and contextual social capital is not an artifact. These results offer further dimensions for future research. A more detailed and vigorous investigation may be called upon to study the impact of social capital variation, involving development of more suitable instruments to unearth the pattern of variations more systematically.

Finally, we sugges<sup>t</sup> that policy mechanisms should be set in place to strengthen social networks and create economic upliftment of individuals. The programs should be aimed at inculcating social parity among the community members and at reducing the disparity in the access of medical benefits. Community health and social wellbeing for individuals should to be given attention with special emphasis to women, middle-aged, and elderly citizens. In rural areas, schemes should be set in place to

encourage employment and business opportunities for youth through promotion of cottage industries. These schemes will be able to create employment avenues for the large number of college-educated students hailing from rural areas and hence avoid their rapid transition to larger cities. It will also be helpful in curtailing dissatisfaction among their elderly family members who are plagued with issues of staying alone as their children and even grand-children migrate to urban areas for better job prospects.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, L.G.; methodology, X.L.; software, X.L.; validation, X.L.; formal analysis, X.L. and R.L.; investigation, B.L.; resources, B.L.; data curation, B.L.; writing—original draft preparation, L.G.; writing—review and editing, L.G. and R.L.; supervision, B.L.; project administration, B.L.; funding acquisition, L.G. and B.L.; X.L and L.G. equally contributed to this article.

**Funding:** This project was funded by the Qilu Early Career Scholarship Project of Shandong University, China.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.
