Sarah Botterman Marc Hooghe Department of Political Sciences, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven The Impact of Community Indicators on Voluntary Associations in Urban and Rural Areas in Belgium From GDP to Well-being. Economics on the Road to Sustainability 3-6 December - Ancona, Italy

Social Integration as a Condition for General Well-being Voluntary Associations De Tocqueville Learning school of democracy Durkheim Remedy against phenomena such as atomization and social disintegration Putnam Positive effects on democracies, economies and governments

Various policies 1.European Union Creating vibrant civil societies Creating common identities 2.National governments Active involvement in the civil society Equality/Inclusion

Research question Do community indicators influence participation levels in voluntary associations in Flanders, Belgium? Does there still exist a difference between the rural and urban areas?

Data – individual level Social Cohesion Indicators in Flanders Survey 2009 Two-stage cluster sample 40 communities 2,080 persons Face-to-face interviews 54% response rate

Data – community level Social Cohesion Indicators in Flanders Community Dataset National Institute of Statistics Federal Police Data Bank Social Security …

Membership in Voluntary Associations NeverPastPresent Passive Present Active Youth Environmental82873 Women85726 Religious89524 Community86625 Family Senior citizen91136 Humanitarian Political Sport Hobby Other92225 Participation in any of the above mentioned associations

Model 0 – Intra Class Correlation ρ t = τ² 0 / (τ² 0 + π²/3) ρ t > 3% AssociationICC (%) Youth6 Women6 Religion9 Family11 Senior citizens7

Logistic multilevel regressions YouthWomenReligionFamily Senior citizen Age0.96***1.02***1.02**1.08*** Gender0.55***45.64*** Education1.35*** 1.57*** Income1.61***2.01**1.75*0.44* Partner0.38***1.96*0.67* Religion1.22**1.52***2.03***1.43**1.70*** SWB1.33**

Are there compositional effects? YouthWomenReligionFamily Senior citizen ICC null model6% 9%11%7% ICC model with level 1 variables 6%3%8%9%6%  The community has a significant effect on the probability to participate in voluntary associations

YouthWomenReligionFamily Senior citizen Population density 1.001* Mean income0.810**0.767** Unemployment rate 0.844**0.867** Associational life Religious belonging 0.764* Logistic multilevel regressions

Discussion No significant community characteristics for every type of association Individual income positive effect on participation versus mean income community negative effect on participation  Rich communities do not foster social capital as much as the more average income communities

Intensity of participation Count variable Traditional associations: youth - women - socio- cultural - political - religion - unions - senior citizen Most successful - most widespread - traditional hierarchical structure Focus on local chapter of a national umbrella federation

Model 0 ICC 7% After this model, we observe that only one per cent of the intra-class correlation coefficient is explained due to compositional effects.

Poisson multilevel regression Model 1Model 2 Individual level% Age1.61 Education19.60 Income30.73 Partner Religion31.39 Subjective well-being14.80 Municipal level Mean income Unemployment rate-7.13

Discussion Community level characteristics do have an impact on participation intensity Urbanisation has no impact Income and deprivation main determinants

Conclusion Participation levels suffer from both extremes Income and deprivation main determinants No difference between rural and urban communities  In general inhabitants of urban cities participate just as intensively in civic life as inhabitants of rural communities