The Contextual and Compositional Associations of Social Capital and Subjective Happiness: A Multilevel Analysis from Seoul, South Korea

Although studies on the association between social capital and subjective well-being have been recently increasing many issues
still remain unsolved. The purpose of this study is to investigate the association between various social capital dimensions
both at the individual (political participation, network source, trust, and organizational participation) and area level (voting
rate, trust, and organizational participation) and subjective well-being (happiness) using multilevel analysis while controlling
for various control variables at multiple levels. Survey data was collected from December, 2010 to April, 2011 in Seoul, South
Korea. The final sample was comprised of 4,585 respondents within all 25 administrative areas in Seoul. Results from the multilevel
analysis revealed that all individual and area level (trust) social capital variables are positively associated with subjective
happiness. Our findings also point to the need for more sophisticated studies with longitudinal datasets based on multilevel
framework using instrumental variable analysis to clarify our knowledge regarding the effects of social capital on subjective
well-being.