Soc Indic Res (2011) 104:157–177

DOI 10.1007/s11205-010-9733-1

Different Things Make Different People Happy:

Examining Social Capital and Subjective Well-Being
by Gender and Parental Status

Christian Kroll

Accepted: 4 October 2010 / Published online: 27 October 2010

 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract This paper addresses a number of key challenges in current subjective well-
being (SWB) research: A new wave of studies should take into account that different things
may make different people happy, thus going beyond a unitary ‘happiness formula’.
Furthermore, empirical results need to be connected to broader theoretical narratives.
Using a re-examination of the social context of well-being as its case study, this article
therefore resorts to sociological theory and fills a gap by investigating how social capital is
correlated in different ways with the SWB of men, women, parents, and non-parents.
Ordered logit and OLS regression analyses systematically examine slope heterogeneity
using UK data from the European Social Survey. It turns out that civic engagement is not at
all associated with higher life satisfaction for mothers, while the relationship is positive for
men and strongest for childless women. Moreover, informal socialising is positively and
more strongly associated with life satisfaction among women, although only when OLS is
used. In sum, the social context of well-being varies considerably by gender and parental
status. Mothers do not seem to benefit from formal social capital, indicating a ‘‘motherhood
penalty’’ (see Correll et al., Am J Sociol 112(5):1297–1338 in 2007) regarding the psy-
chological rewards usually associated with volunteering. Given the high levels of formal
social capital among mothers, the findings also highlight the importance of the homo
sociologicus concept. Consequently, SWB research can be successfully used to provide
new insights into long-standing interdisciplinary theory debates such as the one on homo
economicus versus homo sociologicus.

Keywords Life satisfaction
Social capital
Volunteering
Revealed preferences

Homo sociologicus
Homo economicus

C. Kroll (&)
Department of Sociology, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2 2AE, UK
e-mail: [Link]@[Link]

C. Kroll
Saguaro Seminar, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

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158 C. Kroll

1 Introduction

Research on subjective well-being (SWB), i.e. people’s evaluations of their lives (Diener
et al. 1999), has come a long way since the first studies in the 1960s. Nonetheless, a
number of key challenges remain at this point in its history which might hinder the science
from becoming established within the mainstream of academic disciplines, and from being
considered a serious tool for policy-makers. First and foremost, common sense suggests
that different things will make different people happy. In other words, utility functions vary
between individuals and communities as human beings have different tastes and find
themselves in different circumstances. The research literature, however, has largely
neglected this fact by homogenising entire nations in pursuit of a unitary ‘happiness
formula’ consisting of a number of variables. Therefore, it is proposed here that a second
wave of research ought to investigate the varying SWB determinants of population sub-
groups. This question is particularly relevant for policy-makers since interventions (which
target certain explanatory variables with a desired positive effect on the response variable
SWB) may not affect all members of society in the same way. A second key challenge is
that the evidence to date is unclear about how certain important factors, such as having
children or one’s gender, affect SWB. And third, the field is widely ‘‘over-researched and
under-theorised’’ (Reeves 2009: 24), resulting in a need to connect the many empirical
findings to date with broader theoretical narratives.
The following article ought to make a contribution towards meeting these challenges. Its
case study is a re-examination of the social context of well-being but the methodological
approach shall serve as a more general illustration of where SWB research could be
heading in the near future.
The Beatles song ‘‘With a little help from my friends’’ illustrates how the quality of our
lives can be enhanced through social relationships. Whether in day-to-day interactions or in
times of distress our social environment can be a vital source of support. In fact, social
science research has shown a positive effect of social capital, defined as ‘‘connections
among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that
arise from them’’ (Putnam 2000: 19), on SWB. Theoretically, the idea that social inte-
gration fosters well-being goes back to Durkheim (1897), and has been reiterated more
recently by psychology (e.g. Myers 1999), social production function theory (Ormel et al.
1999), and the network theory of social capital (Lin 2001a, b). In modern happiness
research, a range of studies have empirically confirmed the link between social capital and
SWB (e.g. Bjørnskov 2008; Helliwell 2003; Helliwell and Putnam 2004; Kroll 2008).
However, the existing studies assume that social capital basically matters in the same
way for all societal groups. Hence, it remains a large research gap how various facets of
social capital affect men’s and women’s SWB differently, and also how the association
varies between parents and childless people.1 This analytical deficiency exists despite the
fact that sociological theory demands such a more differentiated analysis. Consequently,
the following study will analyse the effects of trust, formal (i.e. civic engagement/vol-
unteering),2 and informal (i.e. socialising) social capital on life satisfaction using UK data
from the third round of the European Social Survey.
This paper will therefore substantially add to the state of knowledge by drawing a
nuanced picture of how individual level social capital is associated in different ways with

1
For differences in the relationship between social capital and SWB by age see Kroll (2010).
2
The terms volunteering, civic engagement, voluntary work, and formal social capital are used synony-
mously in this paper.

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Different Things Make Different People Happy 159

life satisfaction for certain societal subgroups. Thereby, it responds the aforementioned
need to respect the complexity of utility functions and in particular to demands for a
gendered analysis of social capital (Gidengil and O’Neill 2006; van Staveren 2002), as well
as to calls for more research into who benefits most from social capital (Kawachi and
Berkman 2001: 458; Meier and Stutzer 2008: 53; Newton 2007: 12). It will furthermore do
so by including several measures of social capital in order to capture various facets of the
construct rather than focussing e.g. on volunteering only. At the same time, this approach
serves to counteract the widespread unawareness of the happiness literature regarding the
distribution and determinants of well-being across different population sub-groups (as
criticised also by Bjørnskov et al. 2008: 121; Dolan et al. 2006: 76). Moreover, the existing
evidence on the respective effects of both gender and parenthood on SWB has been very
inconsistent (Dolan et al. 2008). Thus, a new level of complexity is introduced here to the
analysis by including the third variable social capital in those bivariate relationships, which
will also shed more light on how gender and parenthood are associated with well-being.
Finally, resorting to (mainly sociological) theories ought to frame the empirical results
within the bigger picture of existing academic discourses.

2 Theoretical Background and Related Studies

Why would the effects of social capital on SWB be different for men, women, parents and
childless people? A first theoretical approach that demands the more nuanced study of the
social context of well-being proposed here is role-identity theory. It suggests that nor-
mative societal expectations dictate appropriate behaviour and preferences (Mead 1934;
Merton 1949; Parsons 1951; Turner 2001). Thus, roles are ‘‘parts played by actors in
scripts written by society’’ (Hindin 2007: 1). Those normative societal expectations, along
with the resulting appropriate behaviour and preferences, are different for men compared to
women, and parents compared to non-parents. Hence, a gender identity, for example,
‘‘changes the ‘pay-offs’ from different actions’’ (Akerlof and Kranton 2000: 717).
Second, the socialisation process produces gender differences in preferences and per-
sonality characteristics, especially concerning affiliative style. According to Chodorow’s
(1978) theory of the reproduction of mothering and Gilligan’s (1982) theory of differen-
tiated moral development, women are more at ease with intimacy, emotional communi-
cation, and close interpersonal relationships than men. While boys grow up, they are more
often encouraged to show typically male behaviours such as aggressiveness and compet-
itiveness, whereas girls are usually expected to restrict those feelings in favour of more
empathic emotions. In short, women are socialised to emphasise relationships more, and
socialisation theory assumes ‘‘women to be more related and affiliated than men’’ (Haines
et al. 2008: 167).
Third, men and women are known to have different ‘‘social capital profiles’’ (Lowndes
2006: 221). Previous research has shown that while men often tend to get involved in
associations based on sports and recreational activities, women rather join organisations in
areas such as health, social services, caring and supporting others, or nurturing children.
Men and women reproduce their societal gender identities this way (Erickson 2004;
Gidengil and O’Neill 2006; Lowndes 2006; Norris and Inglehart 2006; Umberson et al.
1996). However, the volunteering may be more or less beneficial to well-being depending
on the type of association, which would affect the relationship between social capital and
SWB. Moreover, for some subgroups the accumulation of formal social capital is likely to
be less discretionary but may be a mere outcome of other social roles. For example, parents

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160 C. Kroll

could get involved in the local Parents and Teachers Association as a result of normative
expectations rather than a desire to follow their interests (Sundeen 1990; Wilson and
Musick 1997; Van Willigen 2000).
A qualitative study featuring interviews with 30 Australian women who are involved in
community life highlighted possible negative consequences that civic engagement can
have for them (Osborne et al. 2009). In fact, mothers frequently reported having a guilty
conscience when volunteering because they felt they were neglecting their family
responsibilities by spending time in voluntary work:
‘‘participating can create negative pressures which may have an impact on women’s
mental health, in that when they undertake regular activities for their own, rather than
their children’s benefit, a sense of guilt at not being a ‘good enough’ mother may be
fostered (ibid.: 219).’’
On the other hand, childless women reported that they participated in associations in
order to surround themselves with children. The study furthermore suggested that the
hierarchical structure of civic organisations may reinforce gender inequalities, resulting
in a detrimental effect on women’s volunteering experience. The latter point is further
illustrated by the fact that, at least according to data from Germany, men usually
occupy the senior positions in civic organisations, even in organisations that have a
majority of female volunteers (BMFSFJ 2005). In the end, this study will therefore also
be a quantitative test of the aforementioned qualitative statements by those Australian
women.
Although the positive association between social capital and SWB is well-established
in the quality of life literature, few studies have tried to examine how this link varies by
gender and none have factored in parental status. Actually, mixed results were so far only
found regarding gender differences in the effect of social capital on health (Denton and
Walters 1999; Denton et al. 2004; Gallicchio et al. 2007; Kavanagh et al. 2006; Khawaja
et al. 2006; Krause et al. 2002; Lee et al. 2008) or on mental illness (Ahem and Hendryx
2008; Cyranowski et al. 2000; Haines et al. 2008; Jeon et al. 2007; Lindstrom and
Mohseni 2009; Turner and Marino 1994; Turner and Turner 1999; Umberson et al. 1996).
Also, many studies concentrate only on volunteering as social capital, and they often
examine only one subgroup as opposed to directly comparing several groups. Most
importantly, though, positive psychological outcomes, in particular life satisfaction, have
not yet been studied in this regard to the best knowledge of the author. In the SWB
literature, a related study (Bjørnskov et al. 2008) focuses rather on institutional macro-
factors and their effect on men’s and women’s SWB by running separate regressions for
gendered sub-samples. The authors conclude that living in a post-communist country is
more detrimental to women’s life satisfaction than men’s, and that a Buddhist or an
Islamic tradition in one’s home country was more conducive for women’s SWB. For
teenagers, Schwartz et al. (2009) examined gender differences in the relationship between
helping behaviour with health and well-being. However, their focus was on altruism
during adolescence, rather than on three kinds of social capital and life satisfaction among
adults, as it is the case in this article.

3 Hypotheses

In order to fulfil the aims as outlined in the introduction, and as a direct result from the
aforementioned theoretical remarks, two hypotheses will be tested.

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Different Things Make Different People Happy 161

Hypothesis 1 The relationship between social capital and SWB varies by gender and
parental status.
Hypothesis 2 For mothers, the relationship between (mainly formal) social capital and
SWB will be weaker compared to fathers, childless women and childless men.

4 Data and Methods

4.1 Dataset and Main Variables

The dataset used in this article is the third round of the European Social Survey3 as it
allows the examination of various facets of social capital. In order to avoid problems
sometimes associated with the international comparability of SWB data, the analysis is
restricted to the UK (N = 2394). SWB as response variable is measured by the widely used
11-point generalised life satisfaction question: All things considered, how satisfied are you
with your life as a whole nowadays? Please answer using this card, where 0 means
extremely dissatisfied and 10 means extremely satisfied. This variable was shown to be a
reasonably valid and reliable indicator of the cognitive aspect of human well-being (e.g.
Kahneman and Krueger 2006).
Social capital is operationalised by three distinct indicators: formal social capital (i.e.
civic engagement/volunteering), informal social capital (i.e. socialising) and trust. This
measurement will serve to ensure maximum comparability with previous research, as well
as to distinguish the respective effect of each facet of social capital on SWB. Formal social
capital is captured by an index of the respondents’ involvement in work for voluntary or
charitable organisations, as well as how often the respondent has helped with or attended
activities in the local area over the last 12 months. Both items contain a 6-point answer
scale ranging from never to at least once a week (Cronbach’s alpha: 0.66). Informal social
capital is measured by asking respondents how often they meet regularly with friends,
relatives or colleagues. The answers range on a 7-point scale from never to every day.
Finally, trust was included as the standard ‘‘rough-and-ready indicator’’ of social capital
(Halpern 2005: 34). It was measured by an 11-point index of whether respondents think
that most people can be trusted or you can’t be too careful, most people try to take
advantage of you or try to be fair, and most of the time people are helpful or are mostly
looking out for themselves (Cronbach’s alpha: 0.70). Answers are recoded where necessary
so that high scores uniformly indicate high social capital.4

4.2 Control Variables

In line with the SWB literature, several standard control variables are included in the study
(see e.g. Dolan et al. 2008 for a recent review of the correlates of SWB). Health is
measured by asking people to rate their general health on a 5-point scale from very good to
very bad. Answers were recoded in order to let higher scores reflect better health. Fur-
thermore, the ESS inquires about the respondent’s net household income in twelve income
bands (e.g. 1,990 to under 3,310 GBP). The individual income of each respondent is

3
The data and further information are available at [Link]
4
Reflecting the mainstream understanding of social capital, marital ties are not part of the definition and
operationalisation of social capital here (Halpern 2005: 14).

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162 C. Kroll

calculated by dividing the middle GBP value of the respective income band by the number
of people in the respondent’s household. Age groups (15–29, 30–64, above 65 years) are
computed as a consequence of the often repeated finding of a u-shaped relationship
between age and SWB. The years of full-time education enter the study, as well as a self-
rating of respondents on an 11-point scale from being not at all religious to very religious.
Finally, dummy variables are formed regarding marital status, unemployment, gender and
parental status. For a more precise subgroup analysis and in accordance with the aims of
this paper, the latter two dummies are divided in model 6 into four subgroups: mothers,
fathers, childless women and childless men.

4.3 Analytical Strategy

Although, strictly speaking, the response variable (generalised life satisfaction) is ordinal in
nature, many past SWB studies have treated it as numerical by using ordinary least squares
(OLS) (linear) regression. Such an approach was in the past justified by the finding that
‘‘assuming cardinality or ordinality of the answers to general satisfaction questions is rel-
atively unimportant to results’’ (Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Frijters 2004: 655). However, this
paper uses both OLS and ordered logit to check whether the method makes a difference to
the results. Thus, one analysis in this paper treats the response variable as numerical,
whereas another assumes it to be ordinal. Moreover, as also the (explanatory) social capital
variables are ordinal, an additional sensitivity analysis of the main model (6) is performed in
which the values of the socialising and the civic engagement variables have been recoded so
as to reflect the answer categories in a different manner (on a 10 point scale, rather than a 6
and a 7 point scale as before).5 Again, both OLS and ordered logit regression analyses are
run for this sensitivity analysis to ensure a higher robustness of the conclusions.
In order to distinguish the effects across the relevant societal subgroups and to make
valid statements about possible slope heterogeneity, interaction effects are examined.6
Interaction terms are formed by multiplying the various social capital variables with each
of the relevant subgroup dummies. The following results section will first of all present the
descriptive levels of social capital in the sample. After that, OLS and ordered logit esti-
mates are discussed. Slope heterogeneity is visualised based on the OLS coefficients using
fitted values for the main results. Note that for all figures displaying such fitted values, the
control and the hidden social capital variables are fixed at the mean.

5 Results

Looking at the descriptive statistics in Table 1, four findings deserve mentioning. First of
all, the levels of social capital are quite similar between the sexes, although women have

5
More precisely, in the sensitivity analysis the civic engagement variable was recoded from [0 = never,
1 = less often, 2 = at least once every 6 months, 3 = at least once every 3 months, 4 = at least once a
month, 5 = at least once a week] into [0 = never, 1 = less often, 2 = at least once every 6 months, 4 = at
least once every 3 months, 5 = at least once a month, 9 = at least once a week]. Likewise, the socialising
variable was recoded from [0 = never, 1 = less than once a month, 2 = once a month, 3 = several times a
month, 4 = once a week, 5 = several times a week, 6 = every day] to [0 = never, 1 = less than once a
month, 2 = once a month, 3 = several times a month, 5 = once a week, 7 = several times a week,
9 = every day].
6
When trying to examine slope heterogeneity, interaction terms have important advantages over running
regressions separately for sub-samples (Jaccard and Turrisi 2003: 36).

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Different Things Make Different People Happy 163

Table 1 Levels of life satisfaction and social capital by gender and parental status in the UK
Means (SD) Life satisfaction Trust Civic engagement Socialising N

Women 7.22 (1.98) 5.62 (1.60) 1.38* (1.53) 4.10 (1.55) 1257
Men 7.23 (1.91) 5.58 (1.64) 1.24* (1.46) 4.08 (1.57) 1137
Parents 7.23* (2.01) 5.64 (1.65) 1.38* (1.53) 3.91* (1.58) 1643
Childless 7.21* (1.79) 5.52 (1.55) 1.16* (1.40) 4.48* (1.44) 750
Mothers 7.19* (2.06) 5.65 (1.64) 1.39* (1.54) 3.96 (1.59) 952
Fathers 7.29 (1.96) 5.63 (1.66) 1.36 (1.51) 3.85 (1.57) 718
Childless women 7.31* (1.76) 5.55 (1.49) 1.34 (1.48) 4.48* (1.37) 332
Childless men 7.14 (1.81) 5.50 (1.60) 1.03* (1.32) 4.49 (1.50) 418
Total 7.23 (1.95) 5.60 (1.62) 1.31 (1.49) 4.09 (1.56) 2394

* Levene statistic \ 0.05 indicating that there is a significant difference between the respective variances in
the population (e.g. civic engagement among men vs. women)

significantly more formal social capital. Second, comparing parents and non-parents it
becomes clear that socialising rates are lower for parents, while they have higher rates of
civic engagement than childless people. Third, life satisfaction is highest among childless
women and lowest among childless men. Last but not least, despite the hypothesised
burden that voluntary work may place on mothers, they have the highest rate of civic
engagement of all four subgroups. Thus, taking these scores as the revealed preferences of
respondents, one would have to conclude that mothers seem to be the ones who thrive most
on formal social capital.
Table 2 contains the unstandardised OLS estimates for the response variable life sat-
isfaction, while the ordered logit coefficients are displayed in Table 3. At the first glance it
becomes apparent that the results are largely identical in terms of significance and direction
of the effects. The following section will examine the findings in more detail.
The first two OLS models in Table 2 largely corroborate earlier findings from the SWB
literature regarding the control variables (model 1), and the effect of social capital (model
2). In terms of the controls featured in model 1, life satisfaction is significantly higher
among respondents who are healthy, rich, of old age, married, not unemployed and reli-
gious. Likewise, model 2 confirms the positive association between all three facets of
social capital and life satisfaction. The more people trust others, as well as the more formal
and the more informal social capital they have, the higher is their life satisfaction. These
patterns are confirmed by the ordered logit regression, although Table 3 indicates that once
social capital variables were entered, the control variable income is no longer significant,
while education then becomes significant. Nonetheless, the odds of a response to be in the
satisfied direction (i.e. y C j rather than y \ j for any answer category j of the life satis-
faction variable) improve with every category increase of social capital.
Models 3 and 4 in both Tables 2 and 3 investigate gender differences in the relationship
between social capital and SWB by including interaction terms between gender and the
three facets of social capital. For the OLS regression, Table 2 shows a significant inter-
action term for women’s socialising indicating that the effect of informal social capital on
SWB is stronger among women than men. Figure 1 illustrates this finding using fitted
values for a respondent with mean scores on all control and other social capital variables,
based on OLS model 3. The plot shows that, ceteris paribus, a woman who does not

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164 C. Kroll

Table 2 Correlates of life satisfaction in the UK (unstandardised OLS estimates)

1 2 3 4 5 6

Constant 5.382*** 4.098*** 4.224*** 4.284*** 4.039*** 4.554***

Health 0.521*** 0.434*** 0.437*** 0.447*** 0.436*** 0.436***
Income 0.175** 0.134* 0.132* 0.124* 0.133* 0.132*
Female 0.016 -0.008 -0.229 0.313 -0.019
Aged 15–29 0.221 0.211 0.198 0.211 0.227 0.208
([Link].: 30–64)
Aged 65? 0.539*** 0.368** 0.365** 0.369** 0.364** 0.341**
Single ([Link].: -0.396** -0.444** -0.441** -0.440** -0.443** -0.444**
married or
civil partner)
Separated -1.028** -1.032*** -1.031*** -1.050*** -1.048*** -1.054***
Divorced -1.146*** -1.036*** -1.018*** -1.049*** -1.034*** -1.008***
Widowed -0.588** -0.651** -0.653** -0.683*** -0.651** -0.624**
Unemployed -0.728** -0.830** -0.839** -0.838** -0.817** -0.823**
Education in years -0.004 -0.018 -0.018 -0.019 -0.017 -0.016
Parent 0.046 0.043 0.026 0.018 0.100
Religiosity 0.062*** 0.045** 0.045** 0.043** 0.044** 0.045**
Trust 0.206*** 0.214*** 0.084 0.210*** 0.113
Civic engagement 0.071* 0.105* 0.336** 0.173** 0.218**
Informal socialising 0.161*** 0.111** 0.228 0.138* 0.155
Female 9 trust -0.023 -0.223
Female 9 civic engagement -0.067 -0.414*
Female 9 socialising 0.108* 0.167
Trust sq 0.013
Civic engagement sq -0.058*
Socialising sq -0.016
Female 9 trust sq. 0.019
Female 9 [Link] 0.086*
sq
Female 9 socialising sq -0.009
Parent 9 trust -0.003
Parent 9 civic engagement -0.135*
Parent 9 socialising 0.032
Childless man ([Link].: -0.878
childless women)
Childless man 9 trust 0.159
Childless man 9 civic -0.118
engagement
Childless man 9 socialising -0.017
Father -0.112
Father 9 trust 0.075
Father 9 civic engagement -0.119
Father 9 socialising -0.048
Mother -0.719
Mother 9 trust 0.106

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Different Things Make Different People Happy 165

Table 2 continued

1 2 3 4 5 6

Mother 9 civic engagement -0.237*

Mother 9 socialising 0.076
Observations 1,768 1,768 1,768 1,768 1,768 1,768
R square 0.131 0.184 0.187 0.192 0.186 0.192
Adjusted R square 0.125 0.177 0.178 0.181 0.178 0.180

*** p \ 0.001; ** p \ 0.01; * p \ 0.05

socialise is less satisfied with her life than a man who does not socialise. But a woman who
does socialise a lot (several times a week or every day) is more satisfied than a man who
socialises that much. In other words, men and women who socialise once a week (value 4
on the x-axis) do not differ in their level of life satisfaction, while gender makes a note-
worthy difference to SWB for those who socialise daily, and even more so for those who
do not socialise at all. Thus, the answer to the unresolved question of the ‘happier gender’
seems to be women under the condition of heavy socialising, while it is men under the
condition of no socialising. However, the corresponding model in Table 3 shows that there
is no significant gender difference in the relationship between socialising and life satis-
faction when ordered logit is used. This discrepancy demonstrates the importance of the
method when analysing SWB data and demands a cautious interpretation of this particular
OLS finding.
Moving on to model 4, there is a gender difference in the association between formal
social capital and SWB, as indicated by the respective significant interaction terms in
Tables 2 and 3. The corresponding fitted values in Fig. 2 based on the OLS coefficients
demonstrate that for men, the association between formal social capital and life satisfaction
is positive at infrequent levels of voluntary work but turns negative at high levels. For
women, though, the relationship is slightly u-shaped.
Turning to the distinction parent versus childless, model 5 in both Tables 2 and 3
reveals that civic engagement is more strongly associated with SWB among childless
people compared to parents. Figure 3 visualises fitted values for the OLS coefficients:
Childless respondents who never participate in community activities are, ceteris paribus,
less satisfied with their lives than parents who do so. However, onwards from voluntary
work of about at least once every 6 months (value 2 on the x-axis), the reverse is true.
Overall, among parents there is less of a ‘life satisfaction discrepancy’ between those who
volunteer a lot and those who do not volunteer at all, i.e. the graph is flatter than for the
childless group and rather indicates a non-relationship (b = 0.003). Put in a different way,
being a parent shows a detrimental effect on SWB at high levels of civic engagement,
while for those who do not have any formal social capital being a parent is beneficial to
SWB. This finding offers a new perspective on the question whether people with children
are happier by incorporating the social circumstances under which parents and non-parents
may live.
Finally, distinguishing four subgroups at a time (mothers, fathers, childless women and
childless men) in model 6 of Table 2 shows a remarkable result regarding women. While
the association between civic engagement and SWB is very strong and positive for the
reference category of childless women, it is slightly negative for mothers (b = -0.009), as
further illustrated in Fig. 4. Thus, the often proclaimed benefits of formal social capital do

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166 C. Kroll

Table 3 Ordered logit (N = 1,768)

1 2 3 4 5 6

Life Satisfaction = 0 -3.362*** -2.188*** -2.272*** -2.888*** -2.154*** -2.998***

Life satisfaction = 1 -2.811*** -1.631*** -1.715*** -2.333*** -1.597** -2.443***
Life satisfaction = 2 -2.220*** -1.034** -1.117** -1.739** -0.999* -1.845**
Life satisfaction = 3 -1.293*** -0.108 -0.190 -0.817 -0.070 -0.913
Life satisfaction = 4 -0.643* 0.556 0.475 -0.152 0.595 -0.245
Life satisfaction = 5 0.208 1.442*** 1.364*** 0.734 1.481** 0.644
Life satisfaction = 6 0.792** 2.042*** 1.967*** 1.336* 2.081*** 1.248*
Life satisfaction = 7 1.685*** 2.981*** 2.906*** 2.280*** 3.020*** 2.194**
Life satisfaction = 8 3.115*** 4.459*** 4.384*** 3.779*** 4.501*** 3.681***
Life satisfaction = 9 4.301*** 5.678*** 5.603*** 5.016*** 5.722*** 4.906***
Health 0.537*** 0.459*** 0.463*** 0.485*** 0.459*** 0.458***
Income 0.127* 0.091 0.090 0.091 0.089 0.088
Female 0.060 0.034 -0.125 0.555 0.024
Aged 15–29 ([Link].: 30–64) 0.146 0.153 0.141 0.148 0.167 0.145
Aged 65 ? 0.596*** 0.440** 0.434** 0.425** 0.432** 0.408**
Single ([Link].: married or -0.292* -0.368* -0.362* -0.356* -0.369* -0.373**
civil partner)
Separated -0.787** -0.919** -0.916** -0.959** -0.946** -0.957**
Divorced -1.029*** -0.949*** -0.930*** -1.005*** -0.951*** -0.929***
Widowed -0.494* -0.593** -0.590** -0.658** -0.590** -0.561**
Unemployed -0.672** -0.770** -0.781** -0.824** -0.764** -0.761**
Education in years -0.009 -0.025* -0.025* -0.025* -0.023* -0.023
Parent 0.053 0.028 0.018 0.013 0.064
Religiosity 0.057*** 0.043** 0.043** 0.042** 0.042** 0.043**
Trust 0.213*** 0.220*** -0.103 0.205*** 0.081
Civic engagement 0.086** 0.122** 0.359** 0.197** 0.272**
Informal socialising 0.148*** 0.107** 0.100 0.134* 0.110
Female 9 trust -0.018 -0.293
Female 9 civic engagement -0.072 -0.517**
Female 9 socialising 0.089 0.233
Trust sq 0.031*
Civic engagement sq -0.060*
Socialising sq 0.001
Female 9 trust sq. 0.024
Female 9 civic engagement 0.109**
sq
Female 9 socialising sq -0.020
Parent 9 trust 0.014
Parent 9 civic engagement -0.147*
Parent 9 socialising 0.019
Childless man ([Link].: -1.361
childless women)
Childless man 9 trust 0.207

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Different Things Make Different People Happy 167

Table 3 continued

1 2 3 4 5 6

Childless man 9 civic -0.167

engagement
Childless man 9 socialising 0.049
Father -0.425
Father 9 trust 0.107
Father 9 civic engagement -0.150
Father 9 socialising -0.019
Mother -1.077
Mother 9 trust 0.165
Mother 9 civic engagement -0.293**
Mother 9 socialising 0.105
*** p \ 0.001; ** p \ 0.01; * p \ 0.05

not seem to be felt by mothers. Their graph in Fig. 4 shows that those mothers who
volunteer a lot are not any more satisfied with their lives than those who do not volunteer at
all—in fact, they are even slightly less satisfied. Meanwhile, childless women are the one
subgroup that has the biggest difference in life satisfaction between those having no formal
social capital and those having much of it. Furthermore, being a female parent versus
female non-parent has the largest effect on SWB at high levels of formal social capital, as
illustrated by the large gap in life satisfaction between childless women who volunteer at
least once a week and mothers who do so (see Fig. 4).
How mothers and childless women benefit differently from formal social capital can
also be demonstrated by calculating compensating income differentials. Based on the OLS
coefficients, this method allows estimating which amount of income would be necessary
to match an increase in life satisfaction that is associated with a change in social capital. It
turns out that among childless women, a shift from no civic engagement to volunteering
at least once a month is on average associated with an increase in life satisfaction by
0.872 on the 11-point scale. This rise corresponds to an increase in income by 6606 GBP
per month. For mothers, on the other hand, such an intensification of voluntary work
would have the same life satisfaction effect as reducing their income by 273 GBP
(-0.036 points).
Furthermore, it must be stressed that only the interaction term for mothers is sig-
nificant in model 6 (of both Tables 2, 3). This result shows that the previously found
difference in slopes between parents and non-parents is actually mainly due to the
difference among female respondents, i.e. between mothers and childless women. There
is no significant difference in the rising slopes between childless women, fathers, and
childless men,7 meaning that only the mothers stand out in this analysis. Hence, there is
evidence of a ‘‘motherhood penalty’’ regarding the benefits from volunteering. This term
was coined in a different context by Correll et al. (2007: 1297) based on the finding that
mothers were discriminated against in the workplace compared to childless women, e.g.

7
There is no difference between the subgroups when altering the reference category (not shown).

123
168 C. Kroll

Fig. 1 Socialising and life satisfaction by gender

Fig. 2 Civic engagement and life satisfaction by gender

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Different Things Make Different People Happy 169

Fig. 3 Civic engagement and life satisfaction by parental status

Fig. 4 Civic engagement and life satisfaction by gender and parental status

123
170 C. Kroll

with respect to their salary. Men, on the other hand, were not penalised for being a
parent. Earlier research had also revealed that the pay gap between mothers and non-
mothers is actually larger than the pay gap between men and women (Crittenden 2001).
Such alarming results translate into the psychological benefits of voluntary work
examined here: If we think of increased life satisfaction as a non-monetary reward
usually associated with civic engagement, then mothers are not getting any of it, while
fathers and non-parents do.
The ordered logit regression in model 6 of Table 3 confirms this OLS finding: Vol-
unteering increases the chances of reporting higher scores of life satisfaction for 3 out of 4
subgroups. Particularly for childless women, a single category increase on the volunteering
variable results in a 31.3% higher chance of reporting higher rather than lower life sat-
isfaction (based on the calculated odds ratios). The effects corresponding to the civic
engagement of fathers and childless men are not significantly different from the one for
childless women in this regard. For mothers, however, there is no positive effect of such
formal social capital on SWB, and the coefficient differs significantly from the reference
category childless women. Hence, the motherhood penalty persists even if ordered logit
regression is chosen as opposed to OLS. Mothers who volunteer more have a slightly lower
chance of being in the higher life satisfaction categories. More precisely, a mother’s odds
of reporting a rather low life satisfaction score (i.e. y B j rather than y [ j for any answer
category j of the life satisfaction variable) multiply by 1.021 for every point increase on the
volunteering variable.
The main finding remains present even during an additional sensitivity analysis in which
the social capital variables have been recoded (see Table 4 in ‘‘Appendix’’). Both OLS and
ordered logit regression coefficients mirror the result regarding the motherhood penalty
discussed earlier, with the social capital effects and interaction terms simply being smaller
due to the coding on a 10 point scale, rather than a 6 and a 7 point scale as before. Finally,
it shall be noted that no significant subgroup difference was found regarding trust as a
measure of social capital in any model.

6 Conclusions and Discussion

The aim of this paper was to address a number of current key challenges in SWB research.
Namely, the fact that different things make different people happy has largely been
neglected in the literature. Furthermore, uncertainty prevails over the exact relationship
between gender and SWB, as well as parental status and SWB. Finally, empirical results
are too rarely connected to broader theoretical narratives. As its case study, this article
re-examined the social context of well-being by gender and parental status.
Both hypotheses that were derived from sociological theory and tested here receive
some empirical support by the analyses. First, the relationship between social capital and
SWB does vary by gender and parental status to a certain extent. There are gender dif-
ferences regarding the association between formal social capital and SWB. Figure 2 shows
that the marginal utility of formal social capital increases at high levels for women while it
decreases at high levels for men. Thus, ceteris paribus, women with no and high levels of
formal social capital, and men with moderate levels of formal social capital report the
highest life satisfaction.
Nearly all results are identical across the two methodological approaches used in terms
of significance and direction of the effects with one major exception: The OLS analysis
shows that men seem to be more indifferent than women when it comes to the importance

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Different Things Make Different People Happy 171

of informal social capital for their SWB. Among women, socialising matters more to life
satisfaction, lending support to the notion that women are more at ease with social con-
nectedness as a result of their relationship-oriented socialisation. This particular result,
however, was not confirmed by the ordered logit regression which indicates that the choice
of method is important in SWB research, as it can make a difference to the outcome of a
study in this context.
Differences between parents and childless people were found with formal social
capital having a stronger positive effect on non-parents’ SWB. The latter effect, how-
ever, was mainly due to the female respondents, as revealed by a final analysis com-
bining both the gender and the parental status dimensions. While childless women had
the most positive outcomes from formal social capital, there is a weak and slightly
negative association among mothers, despite them having the highest rates of civic
engagement. This result supports the second hypothesis that for mothers the relationship
between—at least formal—social capital is weaker than for other groups. In the end,
coming back to the ‘cui bono’ question posed in the beginning about who benefits most
from which facet of social capital in this case study, it can be concluded that all
subgroups benefit equally from social trust. However, from socialising women benefit a
lot, and men a little. Finally, from volunteering childless women benefit a lot, men a
little, and mothers not at all.
Two interpretations follow the strikingly different well-being effect of civic engage-
ment among women. First, childless women thrive on volunteering. It is likely to be of a
more discretionary nature and related to their own interests. Also, it could provide them
with a sense of fulfilment that may be rooted in their gender identity, bearing in mind
that the female social capital profile is largely based on the areas of care and nurture
(Lowndes 2006). More precisely, women who do not have children of their own reported
in qualitative interviews to get involved in community life in order to surround them-
selves with kids (Osborne et al. 2009). This may give them an opportunity—that they do
not have to this degree in other areas of life—to reinforce their female gender identity.
The precise nature of the mechanism, however, certainly merits further (qualitative)
work.
Second, mothers do not seem to benefit from their voluntary work, unlike fathers and
non-parents. There is evidence of a motherhood penalty in terms of the psychological
benefits associated with volunteering. In fact, the lack of a positive correlation between
civic engagement and SWB for mothers with regard to them having the highest levels of
such formal social capital seems puzzling at a first glance. Why would mothers volunteer
so much if this is not associated with more (but even slightly less) well-being? These
results cast doubts on revealed preferences as a measure of utility for this subgroup and are
contrary to what rational choice theory and the homo economicus approach propose. Both
assume human beings to act according to their preferences in order to maximise utility.
Instead, this result reinforces the assumptions held by role-identity theory and the homo
sociologicus approach (Dahrendorf 1973). According to this model, human action is
restricted by societal norms and expectations.8 Homo sociologicus acts to fulfil role
obligations (ibid.). Therefore, mothers can be assumed to volunteer out of such role
obligations rather than in order to maximise their own utility. After all, in Osborne et al.’s

8
This view supports James Duesenberry’s (1960: 233) observation that: ‘‘Economics is all about how
people make choices […] Sociology is all about how they don’t have any choices to make.’’

123
172 C. Kroll

(2009: 221) in-depth interviews, mothers described their widespread engagement in par-
enting-based groups as ‘‘normal and inevitable’’. Moreover, they may suffer from feelings
of guilt when neglecting their family responsibilities due to civic engagement as they often
have to ‘juggle’ several family and work-related responsibilities (ibid.). Those findings
illustrate that SWB research can make valuable contributions to long-standing interdisci-
plinary debates in the social sciences such as the one on homo economicus versus
sociologicus.
With regard to the ambivalent state of the knowledge on the effects of gender and
parental status on SWB this study has shown that incorporating the social context can give
important clues. More precisely, under the condition of low social capital men and parents
were more satisfied with their lives, while women and non-parents had higher SWB levels
under high social capital conditions.
Furthermore, the differing outcomes of social capital for the various subgroups pre-
sented here demand a refinement of the current mainstream understanding of social
capital. The overwhelming majority of empirical studies (see introduction of this paper)
concluded that social capital is a source of well-being for every member of society.
Given the results presented here, however, it may be necessary to take into account that
the context under which social capital is accumulated may have a strong effect on
outcomes. Perhaps a more balanced view of social capital ought to be adopted under
certain conditions. Going back to Bourdieu (1986), for instance, the French sociologist
claimed that the main purpose of social capital is for privileged groups to exclude others
and to maintain existing societal hierarchies. Likewise, Woolcock and Narayan (2000:
231) have described the nature of social capital as a ‘‘double-edged sword’’ that may
have positive as well as negative outcomes. Thus, the downsides of social capital, like
excess claims on group members, restrictions on individual freedom, and downward
levelling norms (Portes 1998) may at this point in time be felt more heavily by certain
subgroups such as mothers.
So how could the motherhood penalty be overcome in practical terms and volun-
teering be made enjoyable for mothers, too? After all, there was no difference between
fathers and childless men in the relationship between formal social capital and SWB (see
Fig. 4), indicating that the benefits that men reap from their voluntary work are unaf-
fected by parenthood. Two solutions are possible: The short-term solution would be to
introduce more flexible and family-friendly patterns of volunteering in order to allow
mothers to combine their family responsibilities with civic engagement. The long-term
solution, however, would be to work towards a more equal gender identity that shares the
burden of family responsibilities between men and women in a more even-handed
manner. This way, mothers would be less likely to feel a guilty conscience if they spend
an evening at the community centre or the running club.
Three limitations of this study shall be pointed out. The first one lies—as it is the case
with all correlational analyses—rooted in the issue of causation. Although this investi-
gation cannot establish whether social capital causes life satisfaction or vice versa, it will
refer to previous longitudinal research that has found causal effects in both directions
(e.g. Meier and Stutzer 2008; Thoits and Hewitt 2001; van Willigen 2000). If one was to
consider the results found here from a reverse causality perspective, then it could be
concluded that a possible self-selection mechanism which makes satisfied people more
likely to volunteer does not apply to mothers. Instead, members of this subgroup seem to
participate in community life regardless of a more satisfied or happy nature. Such an
interpretation would equally be a gain to the existing literature. However, while out-
comes in that other direction are acknowledged, this particular study focuses on the

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Different Things Make Different People Happy 173

effects from social capital on SWB based on previous causal evidence. Such an approach
is in line with the professional consensus that ‘‘most researchers now agree that social
ties have a salutary effect on mental health and psychological well-being’’ (Kawachi and
Berkman 2001: 459). Finally, the discovery of slope heterogeneity is in itself a new and
interesting fact regardless of the causation arrows.
Second, one aim of this paper was to end the widespread generalisation in the SWB
literature of the mechanism between social capital and SWB for entire national popula-
tions. It could of course still be argued that mothers are a similarly heterogeneous group
that ought not to be treated as one entity. Some mothers are in employment, some are
housewives; while some look after young children, others may no longer need to care for
theirs because their children are grown-ups. However, there is a rather practical issue of a
diminishing sample size and thus external validity the more specific and smaller the
respective subgroups become. More importantly, this study shall serve as an important but
initial step towards a more fine-tuned understanding of the mechanisms influencing the
well-being of certain subgroups of society. Thus, the promising results presented here hope
to spark further research and debate.
Third, the survey used in this paper contains no information whether volunteers occupy
a senior or subordinate position in their civic organisation. Hence, future surveys should
routinely include such items in order to test the hypothesis that inequalities are reproduced
in civic engagement and if this has a detrimental impact on some volunteers’ well-being.
Also, it may be promising to examine whether civic engagement in certain types of
associations is more beneficial to SWB than in others. In this regard, Morrow-Howell et al.
(2009) have conducted an interesting in-depth study among older adults reporting that
aspects of the volunteer experience, e.g. the amount of involvement, adequacy of training,
and ongoing support also influence in how far an individual benefits from civic engage-
ment in terms of feeling ‘‘better off’’ due to volunteering. It would be advantageous if such
items were more often included in surveys about social capital in order to fully understand
how the benefits of civic engagement can be maximised among various groups in society.
Last but not least, further qualitative studies in this area could try to determine whether the
discrepancies between the subgroups studied here are due to variations in the quality of
social capital that they accumulate or rather the result of different tastes and utility
functions.
What is clear, however, is that these results showing significant slope heterogeneity
serve as an important first step towards entangling the bigger question of which particular
variables have a stronger effect on the SWB of which particular societal subgroup. More
work using this approach in other contexts than social capital, e.g. regarding the potentially
differing effects of income or employment status on SWB across population groups, is
surely worthwhile.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Ursula Henz, John Helliwell, Jouni Kuha, Richard Layard, Guy
Mayraz, the anonymous reviewers, as well as the participants of the ISQOLS conference 2009 for helpful
remarks in relation to this research. A Ph.D. scholarship by the Foundation of the German Economy is
gratefully acknowledged.

Appendix

See Table 4.

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174 C. Kroll

Table 4 OLS and ordered logit

OLS Ordered logit
with social capital variables
recoded onto a 10-point scale
Life satisfaction = 0 -3.071***
Life satisfaction = 1 -2.517***
Life satisfaction = 2 -1.920**
Life satisfaction = 3 -0.989
Life satisfaction = 4 -0.322
Life satisfaction = 5 0.565
Life satisfaction = 6 1.167
Life satisfaction = 7 2.110***
Life satisfaction = 8 3.596***
Life satisfaction = 9 4.821***
Constant 4.643***
Health 0.437*** 0.457***
Income 0.139* 0.094
Aged 15–29 (ref. cat.: 30–64) 0.207 0.143
Aged 65? 0.342** 0.407**
Single ([Link].: married or civil partner) -0.451** -0.381**
Separated -1.066*** -0.978**
Divorced -1.022*** -0.941***
Widow -0.629** -0.566**
Unemployed -0.816** -0.756**
Education in years -0.014 -0.021
Religiosity 0.045** 0.043**
Trust 0.118 0.084
Civic engagement 0.140* 0.175**
Informal socialising 0.099 0.072
Childless man ([Link].: childless -0.909 -1.364
women)
Childless man 9 trust 0.156 0.206
Childless man 9 civic engagement -0.080 -0.112
Childless man 9 socialising -0.009 0.030
Father -0.075 -0.392
Father 9 trust 0.074 0.110
Father 9 civic engagement -0.094 -0.117
Father 9 socialising -0.042 -0.024
Mother -0.618 -0.996
Mother 9 trust 0.098 0.159
Mother 9 civic engagement -0.144* -0.176**
Mother 9 socialising 0.033 0.051
Observations 1,768 1,768
R square 0.189
*** p \ 0.001; ** p \ 0.01;
Adjusted R square 0.177
* p \ 0.05

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Different Things Make Different People Happy 175

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