Clap along if you know what happiness is to you! Wealth, Trust and Subjective Well-being

Anne Musson and Damien Rousselière

No 1702, CIRIEC Working Papers from CIRIEC - Université de Liège

Abstract: Social capital and especially trust are the foundation of most personal relationships and it is considered a key factor of many economic and social outcomes since Banfield (1958), Coleman (1990) and Putnam (2000). The purpose of this study is twofold. First, we investigate the role of wealth of countries in explaining trust and another proxy of social capital, the voluntary association membership. Secondly, we analyze the link between wealth, social capital and subjective well-being. This paper answer the following questions: Does living in a richer country enhance the willingness of people to trust each other? Does living in a richer country (regarding total wealth, intangible and social capital) enhance the subjective well-being? Do trust and happiness equations differ across countries, following their wealth structures? Our original empirical approach address simultaneously these three questions, using a recursive mixed-process model, with bootstrapped standard errors accounting for the sampling design. We support the idea that social capital may turn wealth into subjective happiness and can build resilience in time of crisis.

Keywords: Recursive Mixed-Process Model, Subjective Well-Being; Social Capital; Trust; Voluntary Association Membership; Wealth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C35 I31 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-hpe and nep-soc
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:crc:wpaper:1702

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