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Kin, Friend and Community Social Capital: Effects on Well-Being and Prospective Life Conditions in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan

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Abstract

This study investigates the effect of social capital on perceived and predicted wellbeing in three East Asian countries. On the basis of a multi-layered approach to measuring social capital by both trust in and interactions with kin, friends and neighbors, an individual’s happiness, life satisfaction, and the prospective life conditions over three life course phases are estimated using regression techniques. Trust generally is correlated with an individual’s well-being, but the degree of covariation differs across different types of trust. These exists a persistent, substantial influence of community involvement on perceived well-being and predicted life condition in old age. Trust in neighbors is not necessary for those with high community involvement, which is a major explanatory factor in predicting well-being in old age. In addition, the estimation outcomes from the interaction model do not suggest that the dark side of such trust is a concern.

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Notes

  1. The difference in size of the sample is mainly due to differential allocation of funds for surveys in these three countries. China was approached but decided not to participate in this project..

  2. Some advocacy groups also call themselves a community, for example, gay or online communities, although they are not “community-based” (Arneil 2006). This study does not include this type of relationships in analysis, while recognizing its increased significance in East Asia.

  3. An often-used indicator of generalized trust, “trust in most people” is also included in the SoWSA. It is not used here, for the reason that kin, friends and neighbors conceptually are part of “most people” and thus redundancy becomes a concern. Therefore, trust in strangers is chosen as a proxy for generalized trust.

  4. The SoWSA survey also collected information about the degree of warmth a respondent felt with relatives. A preliminary analysis did not show a substantial effect of those on the three perceived types of well-being. I also found the degree of familiarity with people in the neighborhood to be only thinly correlated with personal well-being. I decided to not include these two factors in further estimation.

  5. Among Japanese, for those who reported having an income, their standardized income was calculated and then divided into three groups (high, middle, and low, each constituting approximately 33.3%). Respondents who had no income or did not report income were assigned to a fourth group. The four groups are recoded into a set of dummy variables, with the low income group used as a reference in estimation. This way I am still able to compare the effect of income on perceived life conditions. The coefficients of the missing group are of less interest in this study. Only a few respondents lacked income information in South Korea and Taiwan; they were not included in the analysis.

  6. The Breusch-Pagan test of independence with SUR models rejects the assumption that the dependent variables are uncorrelated for each country sample.

  7. I calculated the turning point of the quadratic function (= |b1/2b2|) for the first equation, which is approximately at 64 years of age. The second one is at 75, which is unrealistically high. The third one is at 59 years old.

  8. I designated high as one standard deviation (SD) larger than the mean, and low as one SD smaller than the mean. Medium indicates the average score.

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  1. Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, 128 Academia Road, Sec. 2, Nangang, Taipei, 11529, Taiwan

    Ming-Chang Tsai

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Tsai, MC. Kin, Friend and Community Social Capital: Effects on Well-Being and Prospective Life Conditions in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Soc Indic Res 154, 489–510 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-020-02570-x

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