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Subjective Well-Being and Social Capital in Belgian Communities. The Impact of Community Characteristics on Subjective Well-Being Indicators in Belgium

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Abstract

In this article, we investigate the effect of individual and community level characteristics on subjective well-being in Belgium. Various indicators for subjective well-being are being used in a multilevel analysis of the 2009 SCIF survey (n = 2,080) and the 2006 Belgian ESS sample (n = 1,798). On the individual level, most hypotheses on the determinants of subjective well-being were confirmed. Living with a partner and age were shown to have strong effects, but also social capital indicators had a significant positive effect on subjective well-being. All these effects remained significant controlling for optimism. On the community level, especially unemployment rate had a negative impact on subjective well-being. The analysis further demonstrates that in homogeneous regions, community characteristics have a far weaker impact on subjective well-being indicators than in economically more heterogeneous regions.

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Notes

  1. We are very grateful to Geert Loosveldt and Koen Buellens of the Belgian ESS team who have made this information available.

  2. Hagenaars et al. (1994) have developed the OECD modified household equivalence scale, which takes in account the number of people in a household. Applying this formula did not lead to other results with regard to the effect of family income.

  3. For individual subjective well-being: τ = 0.00000, σ2 = 0.99952, ICC (τ/(τ + σ²)) = 0.0000, sig = 1.000. For social subjective well-being: τ = 0.00782, σ2 = 0.99181, ICC (τ/(τ+σ²)) = 0.00782, sig = 0.054.

  4. For the other indicators too, intra-class correlation remained extremely limited: satisfaction with leisure time (0.14%); with family life (0.46%) and sexual life (0.59%).

  5. We have to add here that Belgium is usually considered as a ‘diverse society’. Linguistic segregation policies, however, imply that the Flemish region that we investigated in homogenously Dutch speaking, while the Walloon region in the South of the country is homogeneously French speaking. Only in the capital Brussels (ca. 1 million inhabitants) the language groups are not segregated. As such, the region of Flanders can be considered as a homogeneous society, both with regard to language as with regard to income distribution.

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  1. Leuven, Belgium

    Marc Hooghe & Bram Vanhoutte

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  1. Marc Hooghe
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  2. Bram Vanhoutte
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Correspondence to Marc Hooghe.

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Hooghe, M., Vanhoutte, B. Subjective Well-Being and Social Capital in Belgian Communities. The Impact of Community Characteristics on Subjective Well-Being Indicators in Belgium. Soc Indic Res 100, 17–36 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-010-9600-0

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