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Subjective Well-Being and Social Capital in Belgian Communities

Subjective Well-Being and Social Capital in Belgian Communities. Marc Hooghe Bram Vanhoutte Department of Political Science, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium Conference From GDP to Well-Being, Ancona, 3-5 December 2009. Research Questions.

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Subjective Well-Being and Social Capital in Belgian Communities

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  1. Subjective Well-Being and Social Capital in Belgian Communities Marc Hooghe Bram Vanhoutte Department of Political Science, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium Conference From GDP to Well-Being, Ancona, 3-5 December 2009

  2. Research Questions • Is subjective well-being determined by individual level characteristics? • Impact of social capital: networks, associations, generalized trust • Impact of context: community level Data: SCIF (Social Cohesion Indicators Flanders) survey, April-July 2009, n=2080 Survey designed to allow multilevel research

  3. SCIF-surveyFlemish autonomous region, Belgium (pop. 6,000,000)n: 2,080 in 40 municipalities

  4. Introduction • Subjective well-being is determined by both individual and community characteristics • Role of personality traits, socio-economic background variables and network integration • Community characteristics: deprivation, income, crime, unemployment, segregation, housing, public services,… • Most research focuses on differences between societies. Regional and local differences: studies available in US, Canada & Switzerland

  5. Subjective Well-being • Evaluative / cognitive measure: satisfaction with life ( affective measurement, happiness) • Subjective well-being as composite indicator of quality of life in various domains • Reflects self-realisation on several domains: depends not only on abilities and social position, but also the context • Increasingly important as policy goal and indicator

  6. Subjective Well-Being • Differences between countries well documented • Differences within countries: mixed evidence: • depends on indicator for subjective well-being • is ‘happiness’ a cultural trait/link with individualism • culture as a geographically homogeneous attribute of countries and political systems?

  7. Determinants of Well-Being Individual level • Age • Family structure/relations • Health • Material conditions • Social capital: networks and trust • Personality traits Community level • Crime / Unemployment

  8. Hypotheses • H1: Living with a partner, high income and employment have a positive effect on well-being • H2: Social capital (networks and trust) has a positive influence on well-being • H3: Unemployment and crime in one’s community have a negative impact on well-being

  9. Data and methods • Social Cohesion Indicators Flanders Survey: 2080 respondents between 18 and 85 years old, interviewed face to face, April-July 2009 • Representative sample of population of Flemish autonomous region • Designed for multilevel: representative group of 40 municipalities, with maximum variance on social cohesion indicators, within municipalities random sample of inhabitants • OLS regression and multi-level regression

  10. Operationalization • Subjective Well-being: • Factor scale with four items probing satisfaction on different life domains (family, spare time and social life) and life in general (Cronbach’s α .76) • Income: Natural Log of family income • Generalized Trust: • Factor scale with three items • Optimism (Scheier, Carver & Bridges, 1994) • Factor scale with five items

  11. Results 1: Individual level regression

  12. Results 2: Adding Social Capital(Addition to the variables included in model 1)

  13. Results 3: Adding Subjective Indicators(Addition to the variables included in model 2)

  14. Results 4: Adding Community Effects(Adding community effects to Model 3  multilevel model)  No intra-class correlation of subjective well-being in Belgian communities

  15. Discussion (1) • Individual level: • “Living with partner” better indicator than “being married” • “Satisfaction with income” stronger effect than “income” • “Generalized trust” most important element of social capital • Effects remain strong and significant, controlling for personality trait of optimism

  16. Discussion (2) Why are there no community level effects? • Flemish region too homogeneous? (high income, very low level of income inequality, low levels of crime) • Municipalities not a good level of aggregation (average 20,000 inhabitants) • Well-being scores defined by general culture, not by local context? • Counter-indication: for other indicators, we do find strong community level differences and effects in Flanders • Example: suicide rates in Flemish municipalities

  17. Comparison: age corrected suicide rates for men, 1996-2005

  18. Discussion (3) Toward a threshold model of community influences on subjective well-being? Deprivation, crime and inequality can have an impact on subjective well-being But given sufficiently high levels of income (and low levels of crime and deprivation) no longer an effect of additional variance on subjective well-being? Need to conduct research in more heterogeneous societies

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