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Highlights • Elderly being married, acquiring resources and, practicing higher social action enjoy higher degree of social capital. • Elderly with higher degree of social capital are seen to experience better quality of life and healthy aging. • Social capital is signifcanly associated to lowering functional limitation, depression among eldelry. • High access to psychological resources regarding controlling important things in life put profound impact on the quality of life. • Emerging need to highlight the component of social capital in framing policy for elderly in India. Abstract Background Lacuna in contemporary Indian academic research highlights the need to investigate the component of social capital and health outcome among elderly individuals in Indian context. Study endeavors to investigate prevalence of health indicators: self-rated good health(SRH), functional limitation, depression and quality of life(QoL) and the illustrative effects of social capital on elderly health outcome and QoL. Methods Nationally representative cross-sectional data from WHO Study on global AGEing and adults health (SAGE) India 2007 is used. Individuals aged 50+ are included where logistic regression is used to estimate the effect of social capital along with other co-founders on SRH, functional limitation, and depression. Linear regression model is used to analyse evaluates the impact of social capital with other co-founders on QoL among elderly. Results The multivariate analysis shows that SRH is associated with age, female, those having education, higher social-action with strong trust, safety and higher psychological resources. Depression among elderly is significantly related to age, gender, education level, higher wealth, strong sociability. QoL is inversaly related to age, gender, being muslim. A positive association of QoL is observed with higher education, having wealth, and strong social capital component like currently married, civic engagement, social-action, trust solidarity,and strong psychological resources. Conclusion The paper presents evidence that social capital significantly associated with SRH, lower depression, better functional health and higher quality of life. Hench forth policy makers should construct social policy where elderly feel safe and trusty surrounding, that can involved them into main stream as a productive resource of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]