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Social Indicators Research

Erschienen in:

01.11.2012

Money, Sociability and Happiness: Are Developed Countries Doomed to Social Erosion and Unhappiness?

Time-series Analysis of Social Capital and Subjective Well-being in Western Europe, Australia, Canada and Japan

verfasst von: Francesco Sarracino

Erschienen in: Social Indicators Research | Ausgabe 2/2012

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Abstract

Discovering whether social capital endowments in modern societies have been subjected or not to a process of gradual erosion is one of the most debated topics in recent economic literature. Inaugurated by Putnam’s pioneering studies, the debate on social capital trends has been recently revived by Stevenson and Wolfers (2008) contending Easterlin’s assessment. Present work is aimed at finding evidence for the relationship between changes in social capital and subjective well-being in western Europe, Australia, Canada and Japan between 1980 and 2005. In particular, I would like to answer questions such as: (1) is social capital in western Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan declining? Is such erosion a general trend of modern and richer societies or is it a characteristic feature of the American one? (2) can social capital trend help explain subjective well-being trend? Therefore, present research considers three different set of proxies of social capital controlling for time and socio-demographic aspects using WVS-EVS data between 1980 and 2005. Present results are encouraging, showing evidence of positive correlation between several proxies of social capital and both happiness and life satisfaction. Furthermore, results show that during last twenty-five years people in some of the most modern and developed countries have persistently lost confidence in the judicial system, religious institutions, parliament and civil service.

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Bartolini et al. (2008).

Please, refer to Appendix 7 on page 22 for a discussion of the trends of SC in US using WVS data.

OECD (2001b).

For a review of the main theories proposed so far, please refer to Sarracino (2010a).

Stevenson and Wolfers (2008, p. 16).

Quoted in Schuller et al. (2000, p. 5).

Quoted in S. Baron, J. Field and T. Schuller, Social capital: critical perspectives, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000, p. 6.

OECD (2001b, p. 42)

OECD (2001b, p. 42).

Putnam et al. (1993, p. 56).

Bartolini et al. (2008, p. 5).

Bartolini et al. (2008, p. 5–6).

Please refer to Table 1 for a summarizing scheme.

Table 1

Summarizing scheme of the different constituents of social capital

Relational social capital	Membership
	Unpaid voluntary work
	Trust in others
Non relational social capital	Confidence in	Religious institutions
		Armed forces
		Police
		Press
		Educational system
		Parliament
		Social security system
		Civil service
		Judicial system
		Labor unions
		Political parties
		Major companies

Alesina et al. (2004, p. 2035).

The five waves WVS data-set together with detailed instructions on how to integrate it with EVS data-set is freely available on-line. For more details, please refer to: http://www.wvsevsdb.com/wvs/WVSData.jsp.

Bruni and Stanca (2008, p. 6).

Aguiar and Hurst (2006).

I am aware that marginal effects (MFX) estimated at the mean value of the independent variable are not the best tool to allow comparisons across time, countries and models. Average marginal effects (AME) would best accomplish this task by providing the effect over the dependent variable when the independent moves from its minimum to the maximum value. Still, a comparison between MFX and AME shows that MFX are a good approximation of AME for what concern both the significance and the magnitude of the coefficients (Mood 2010). The advantage in using MFX is that Stata provides a better framework to store and deal with these results.

Detailed summary statistics for each considered country are available on request to the author.

For a more detailed discussion on pattern of missingness and their implication for econometric analysis, please refer to Schafer (1997, 1999), Allison (2001).

Present results are confirmed also by using different clustering algorithms such as the single and the complete linkage ones.

For the detailed trends of the two proxies in each country, please refer to figures from 8 on page 24 to 37 on page 53 in the Appendix.

Bartolini et al. (2008, p. 26).

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Titel: Money, Sociability and Happiness: Are Developed Countries Doomed to Social Erosion and Unhappiness?
Time-series Analysis of Social Capital and Subjective Well-being in Western Europe, Australia, Canada and Japan
verfasst von: Francesco Sarracino
Publikationsdatum: 01.11.2012
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Social Indicators Research / Ausgabe 2/2012
Print ISSN: 0303-8300
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0921
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-011-9898-2

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