Happiness from social capital: An investigation from micro data in rural Thailand

Abstract

Happiness is a mental or emotional state of wellbeing defined by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. This article aims to investigate the impacts of social capital on individual wellbeing using happiness level (0–10 = highest) as a measure of subjective wellbeing and analyzing micro-level data from rural Thailand. We find significant effects of the perception of individual’s social capital, while the effects of community-level social capital are found to have insignificant effects on happiness. Our findings confirm that living in a household or community in which other members are, on average, happy, would cause the person to be happy. The findings suggest that an individual’s subjective perceptions of social capital, especially trusting others and participating in community public meetings, are important indicators that affect happiness at the individual level.

Keywords:

• Community
• happiness
• social capital
• Thailand

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The term “social capital” was mentioned in Coleman, 1988 study.

2. GDP-based studies include those of food vendors in Madagascar by Fafchamps and Minten (2002), those based on samples in European countries by Beugelsdijk and van Schaik (2001), studies in Italy by Helliwell and Putnam (2000), studies in Asian countries by Helliwell (1996), and cross-country data studies by Easterly and Levine (1997), Knack and Keefer (1997), and Zak and Knack (2001).

3. Total expenditure per capita studies have been conducted in Indonesia by Grootaert (2000), in South Africa by Maluccio, Haddad, and May (2000), and in Tanzania by Narayan and Pritchett (1999).

4. Employment-related studies include those carried out in South Korea by Lee and Brinton (1996) and in Toronto, Canada, by Hagan, MacMillan, and Wheaton (1996).

5. Human capital-based studies include those done on the health condition of children in South Africa by Carter and Maluccio (2003), teenagers in the US by Furstenberg and Hughes (1995), criminal cases of teenagers in Canada by Hagan and McCarthy (1995), and academic performance of teenagers in the US by McNeal (1999), Morgan and Sorensen (1999), Sandefur, Meier, and Hernandez (1999), Sun (1999), and Teachman, Paasch, and Carver (1997).

6. http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/aristotle/

7. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) is regarded as the first philosopher to describe “Happiness” using quantitative measurement to quantify happiness into “Utility.” The study of utility as a quantitative measurement of happiness was later carried on by Van Praag (1971),van Praag (1991), Christensen, Jorgenson, and Lau (1975), Jorgenson, Lau, and Stoker (1980), Tinbergen (1991), Ellingsen (1994), Clark and Oswald (1994), and Kahneman, Wakker, and Sarin (1997). Each of these studies focused on explaining the objectives of Utilitarianism.

8. See Stutzer and Frey (2006) and Frey and Stutzer (2004), which explain that being married causes a person to feel secure as well as realize one’s own importance to other family members.

9. For example, a study by Clark and Oswald (1994) discovered that people aged 35–45 are likely to have the lowest level of happiness while a study of Swedes by Gerdtham and Johannesson (1997) found that people aged 45–64 tended to have the lowest level of happiness.

10. However, Putnam (2000) noted that people who were sociable tended to report themselves as very happy more than did those who were unsociable. Thus, this difference in personal habits might cause the happiness level of the samples to be higher than it actually is.

11. This was a face-to-face interview, where interviewers attempted to interview selected households twice on the first day and one more time on the following day. In case the interviewer could not reach the household on the following day, a replacement was made of a next-door neighbor of the sampled household (starting with the immediate-left-door neighbor, the immediate-right-door neighbor, the next-to-immediate-left-door neighbor, and so on) until the household is replaced (on that day). Overall, about 20 percent of the original sampled households could not be reached and thus were replaced.

12. A public meeting (or public hearing) is a formal meeting for receiving testimony from the public at large on a community issue, or proposed government action. Testimony from both sides of an issue is usually recorded for public record. Sometimes, formal public meetings at community are mandated by law (on the environmental impact of a proposed highway project or dam construction, for example). In other cases, government officials use public meetings to gather information that will help them in making decisions or drafting legislation.

13. Due to missing data, observations in Model 4 and Model 5 have reduced from 2864 observations to 1807 and 1592 observations, respectively.

14. Tambon is a Thai word meaning “sub-district.”