Impact of regional disparities in social capital and its components on quality of life

Abstract

According to the prevailing opinion, social capital is one of the most robust indicators of quality of life (QoL). We ask whether this insight applies to Slovakia, as well, on the basis of understanding social capital not as one holistic concept but as a set of interrelated components, which are trust, networks, and norms. The paper has two goals, the first of which is to determine the amount of social capital, its components, and QoL, as well as its spatial disparities, at a district level. In this case, the goal is to determine the quantity of the investigated variables. The data source is the World Value Survey, Round 7, in which Slovakia also participated. The second goal is to find out how social capital and its components affect the QoL in individual districts. In other words, we would like to determine the quality of the impact of social capital and its components on the QoL. The result is the knowledge that social capital as a whole reaches significantly lower values than the QoL and is not a predictor of the QoL in Slovakia. At the same time, however, disparities in the impact of social capital and its components on the QoL have high values. This knowledge challenges the understanding of holistic social capital as a robust indicator of QoL.