Towards a sociology of happiness : examining social capital and subjective well-being across subgroups of society

摘要: This dissertation contributes to a Sociology of Happiness by examining the social context subjective well-being. It follows in Emile Durkheim’s footsteps, whose study Le Suicide initially proposed that being connected is beneficial for human beings. The empirical evidence on relationship between social capital and well-being has indeed grown considerably over last years. However, academic literature has a major shortcoming, as studies usually assume importance for subjective well-being be exactly same individuals. Interestingly, though, sociological theory gives reasons expect association two concepts to vary societal subgroups based idea people have different roles and find themselves circumstances. Hence, this thesis responds need to examine new level complexity fills research gap investigating how social capital correlated ways with life satisfaction gender, age, parental status, marital status. OLS ordered logit regression analyses are conducted in order systematically examine slope heterogeneity, using data from European Social Survey UK. turns out context varies considerably studied here. For example, while among childless women volunteering positively very strongly associated wellbeing, the slightly negative mothers. Consequently, adds significant value happiness by looking beyond population means when studying certain explanatory variables response variable. Moreover, thesis contributes much-needed building by resorting sociological theories. Important implications current policy issues around arise study, it paves way wave research which goes unitary ‘happiness formula’.