Country-Level Bonding, Bridging, and Linking Social Capital and Immigrants’ Life Satisfaction

Yoosun Chu (), Ce Shen () and Jie Yang ()
Additional contact information
Yoosun Chu: Boston College School of Social Work
Ce Shen: Boston College School of Social Work
Jie Yang: Boston College School of Social Work

Applied Research in Quality of Life, 2018, vol. 13, issue 3, No 12, 745-759

Abstract: Abstract This cross-national study examines the contextual effects of country-level social capital on immigrants’ life-satisfaction in host societies. Country-level social capital was constructed by bonding, bridging, and linking according to descriptions by Szreter and Woolcock (2004). We conducted a two-level regression analysis using 3208 immigrants nested within 52 countries included in the World Values Survey Wave 6. Immigrants had a lower level of life satisfaction in host countries with a higher bonding social capital (inward-looking and homogeneous). The effect of age on life satisfaction also varied according to country-level bonding social capital and age-groups. In addition to the effects of country-level social capital, our study found that immigrants had a higher level of life satisfaction in countries with a higher gross national income (GNI) per capita and a lower percentage of immigrants. Consistently with the previous studies, our study also found that immigrants’ key socio-demographics (subjective health, age, gender, marital status, and income level) were significantly associated with immigrants’ life satisfaction. Findings suggest that not only immigrants’ individual characteristics but also the social capital of host countries - in particular, the bonding social capital - play a significant role in immigrants’ life satisfaction.

Keywords: Immigrants; Life satisfaction; Country-level social capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11482-017-9556-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ariqol:v:13:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11482-017-9556-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11482

DOI: 10.1007/s11482-017-9556-1

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Research in Quality of Life is currently edited by Daniel Shek

More articles in Applied Research in Quality of Life from Springer, International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().