1. Quality of life and Social Capital in Mashhad City in Iran

2. Quality of Life: definition
Diversity in definition of QoL
Our definition: perception of a person about his/her life facilities and happiness.

3. Quality of Life: dimensions
Objective
Subjective
Individual
Income, insurance, education, …
Happiness, life satisfaction
Collective
Income average, ratio of insurance, literacy
Average of sense of happiness, average of life satisfaction
Veenhoven 2007

4. Social Capital: definition
“Social Capital” has received much attention since 1960s.
Our definition: Quality [importance and depth] and quantity [frequency] of a person’s social relationships.

5. Social capital: some basic ideas
P. Bourdieu: social capital as a mean of inequality reproduction. (Field 2003).
J. Coleman: Social capital as a set of resources which are in the nature social relationships and organizations (Coleman 1994: 300)
R. Putnam: social capital as connections between individuals, networks and reciprocity and trustworthiness which derives from them.(Putnam 2000)

6. Social capital: dimensions
Trust : expectations and commitments which people have in relation to each other and to organizations and institutions (Paxton 1999: 105).
Social participation: voluntary and deliberate actions in which collective benefits have priority to personal benefits.
Social networks: frequency of relationships and useful connections.

7. Effect of social capital on quality of life
Quality of life is defined by some qualities and quantities
Achieving these qualities and quantities needs some resources.
These resources would be physical, cultural, social and symbolic.

8. Research design Research method: survey
Method of data gathering: questionnaire
Statistical population: one of parents in Mashhad city families
Sample size: 300

9. Standardized equations of linear regression
Findings(1)
Standardized equations of linear regression
QoL=.35(Social capital)+.33(income)+.15(education)
(R=.60; adjusted r square=.35)
Objective QoL=.18(Social capital)+.48(income)+.03(education)
Subjective QoL=.40(Social capital)+.12(income)+.16(education)

10. Explanatory path analysis
Findings (2)
Explanatory path analysis

11. discussion
Social capital and income have relatively equal effect on QoL. In explanation of subjective QoL the effect of social capital is much more. This shows that social capital is a very powerful determinant of QoL.
Whereas Education has no significant effect on social capital, it has a significant effect on income. Here it seems that well educated people have less social relationships (of course they may have more useful connections).
here social capital apart from other kinds of capital is a very important resource for most of people. It seems that social organizations and formal institutions don’t do their main functions correctly and people use their informal relationships and connections to please their needs.