RELATION BETWEEN DEVELOPMENT, SOCIAL TIES AND SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING

This paper aims at analyzing possible social and economic determinants of subjective well-being, incorporating the works of classical sociologists such as Durkheim and Tonnies in relation to the trade-off between modernization-development, temperature of social ties and their impact on subjective wellbeing. Time window is 2005-2014, we use 77 countries grouped into 10 categories in the World Values Survey database. We investigate the effect of different independent variables at the individual level, either sociodemographic (age, gender, marital status), sociological-cultural (religiosity-secularity, adherence to liberal-democratic values) or economic (occupational status, educational level, relative income) on subjective well-being. Results indicate that variables linked to the temperature of social ties have a sizeable effect on subjective well-being. Furthermore, the association between economic development and subjective well-being is relatively weak. In particular, Latin America shows a very high level of subjective well-being ceteris paribus (despite intermediate economic development), which may be partly accounted for by the contributions of classical sociology.