Effects of social capital on self-rated life-satisfaction among residents: evidence from Vietnam

Abstract

This dissertation provides an insight into the relationship between self-rated life-satisfaction and social capital, controlling for some demographic and individual characteristics in rural Vietnam as well as tests the theoretical predictions of the social capital investment model from the data of Vietnam Access To Resources Household Survey in 2014. Social capital is measured as a multidimensional concept including social network, formal institution, cooperation and social trust. The results are quite consistent with the predictions, which supports the theory about the social capital investment of Glaeser et al. (2002) that people who have higher education would have more investment in their social capital, and being stable in the residence also contributes to their investment of social capital while relatively higher income affects their social network and trust negatively. Finally, the association between age and formal institution follows the inverted U-shaped trend. Using order probit model on data for 3415 households from twelve provinces in Vietnam, it is found out that there is a significantly positive relationship between social capital in forms of social network, formal institution and cooperation and an individual’s subjective satisfaction. However, trust, on the other hand, is examined to be insignificantly associated with a person’s self-rated satisfaction in this research.