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Did the Decline in Social Capital Decrease American Happiness? A Relational Explanation of the Happiness Paradox
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TL;DR: The authors showed that the inclusion of social capital does improve the account of reported happiness and provided evidence of a decline in social capital indicators for the period 1975-2004, confirming Putnam's claim.
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Abstract: Most popular explanations of the happiness paradox cannot fully account for the lack of growth in US reported well-being during the last thirty years (Blanchflower and Oswald (2004)) In this paper we test an alternative hypothesis, namely that the decline in US social capital is responsible for what is left unexplained by previous research We provide three main findings First, we show that the inclusion of social capital does improve the account of reported happiness Second, we provide evidence of a decline in social capital indicators for the period 1975-2004, confirming Putnam's claim (Putnam (2000)) Finally, we show that failed growth of happiness is largely due to the decline of social capital and, in particular, to the decline of its relational and intrinsically motivated component
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Citations
Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community
TL;DR: As an example of how the current "war on terrorism" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says "permanently marked" the generation that lived through it and had a "terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century."
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Social Capital and Subjective Wellbeing in Europe: A New Approach on Social Capital
TL;DR: In this paper, a factor analysis is performed to summarize information coming from a large set of variables into different components corresponding to each dimension of social capital (i.e., networks, norms, and trust).
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Does Relative Income Matter? Are the Critics Right?
TL;DR: For example, this paper found that comparator income has a negative effect on happiness equal in magnitude to the positive effect of own income, and that comparisons matter more than actual relative income.
Bowling alone but tweeting together: the evolution of human interaction in the social networking era
TL;DR: The analysis shows that online networking yields a storage mechanism through which any individual contribution—e.g. a blog post, a comment, or a photo—is stored within a particular network and ready for virtual access by each member who connects to the network.
What are we learning from the life satisfaction literature
TL;DR: The recent availability of cross-sectional and longitudinal survey data on life satisfaction in a large number of countries gives us the opportunity to verify empirically what matters for individuals and what economists and policymakers should take into account when trying to promote personal and societal well-being.
References
Gross National Happiness As an Answer to the Easterlin Paradox
TL;DR: The authors found that the happiness responses of around 350,000 people living in the OECD between 1975 and 1997 are positively correlated with the level of income, the welfare state and (weakly) with life expectancy; they are negatively correlated with average number of hours worked, environmental degradation (measured by SOx emissions), crime, openness to trade, inflation and unemployment; all controlling for country and year dummies.
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Inaccurate, Exceptional, One-Sided or Irrelevant? The Debate about the Alleged Decline of Social Capital and Civic Engagement in Western Societies
Dietlind Stolle,Marc Hooghe +1 more
TL;DR: This article argued that younger age cohorts, socialized in the prosperous economic conditions of the 1960s and onwards, are less inclined to engage in community life and in politics, and also less likely to trust their fellow citizens.
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Is trust in others declining in America? An age-period-cohort analysis.
TL;DR: Analyzing survey data for the United States from 1972 to 1998, it is argued that some of the over-time decline might also stem from an age-specific period effect: Beginning in the 1980s the trust of young and middle-aged Americans declined steadily.
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Groups, growth and trust: Cross-country evidence on the Olson and Putnam hypotheses *
TL;DR: This article investigated the impact of association memberships on generalized trust and economic performance, finding little support for Olson's view of theimpact of groups, and only mixed support for the Putnam perspective.
The Relationship between Cohabitation and Marital Quality and Stability: Change across Cohorts?
TL;DR: In this paper, the relationship between premarital cohabitation and marital dysfunction was examined with a total sample of 1,425 spouses in two US marriage cohorts: those married between 1964 and 1980 (when co-habitation was less common).
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