3543522

2593

What predicts the evolution over time of subjective well-being? We correlate the trends of subjective well-being with the trends of social capital and/or GDP. We find that in the long and the medium run social capital largely predicts the trends of subjective well-being. In the short-term this relationship weakens. Indeed, in the short run, changes in social capital predict a much smaller portion of the changes in subjective well-being than over longer periods. GDP follows a reverse path, thus confirming the Easterlin paradox: in the short run GDP is more positively correlated to well-being than in the medium-term, while in the long run this correlation vanishes.

242

Subjective well-being , SOCIAL CAPITAL , time-series , Economic growth , WVS–EVS and ESS , Easterlin paradox

Studia Iranica

256

256