Life satisfaction, social capital and the bonding-bridging nexus

Maurizio Pugno and Paolo Verme

No 5945, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: The paper investigates the relation between social capital and life satisfaction focusing on the distinction between bonding and bridging. Using the latest version of the combined World and European Values Surveys, the authors first address the question of measurement of social capital by means of a multi-step factor analysis. Through this procedure, they nd that proxies typically used for social capital tend to polarize around two dimensions interpreted as bonding and bridging. These two dimensions are in fact associated with a single latent variable with opposite signs suggesting that they describe two sides of the same latent variable rather than two independent latent variables. The authors call this latent variable the locus of socializing and use it to explore the relation between social capital and life satisfaction across world citizens and across groups of similar countries. The results indicate that people with extreme bonding or bridging attitudes are less happy than people with more balanced attitudes. Unlike the literature on social capital and economic growth that finds bridging attitudes more desirable than bonding attitudes, they nd that bonding attitudes are at least as important as bridging attitudes for life satisfaction. This suggests that the social capital dimensions important for economic growth may not necessarily coincide with the social capital dimensions important for life satisfaction.

Keywords: Social Capital; Economic Theory&Research; Social Inclusion&Institutions; Cultural Policy; Labor Policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-01-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Life Satisfaction, Social Capital and the Bonding-Bridging Nexus (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5945

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