The Impact of Three Types of Economic, Cultural and Social Capitals on Youth’s Happiness

Introduction Happiness refers to the cognitive and affective evaluations of one’s own life and is defined in terms of life satisfaction, presence of positive affect and absence of negative affect. Being happy is a response to how to live, especially for the young people, who build the future of this country and follow a purposeful life. Happiness produces passion, emotion, motivation, seeking and effort in youth's life. Importance of happiness and its role on youth’s life is the reason behind doing this research. Also it can play an accelerating role on the process of society’s development. Almost everyone has thoughts about happiness and it seems that everybody has created their own idea of it. Likewise, in science, each discipline has developed its especial view on happiness: psychologists see it as matter of personality, biologists as the result of chemical processes, philosophers see it mostly in a moral context, and sociologists think of it as a social condition. What is remarkable about the sociological view towards happiness is that it provides a common understanding. Where happiness is usually defined as a purely individual or psychological phenomenon, sociologists insist that happiness is socially grounded. Here we consider the effect of three independent variables, namely, economic capital, cultural capital and social capital on happiness. Most of the people believe that having money and a good job can increase their happiness and life satisfaction. Aristotle believed that wealth is a necessary ingredient of happiness (1991). Stoics, in contrast, believed that material possessions and wealth are in no way required for happiness. Research, all in all, suggests that an adequate amount of money is a necessary condition for happiness, albeit not a sufficient one. Diener and Seligman (2002) found in their study on very happy individuals that every single one of them had excellent social relationships. Quantity and, more importantly, quality of friendships correlate positively with happiness, and perceived loneliness is robustly linked to depression. In light of this and other parallel findings, Reis and Gable (2003) have suggested that good social relationships may be the single most important source of happiness. Materials and Methods The method of this research is survey. 380 individuals among the 15-29-year-old residents of Babolsar city constitute our sample size. The sample size is based on stratified cluster sampling and research data was gathered through two kinds of questionnaires: Modified Oxford happiness questionnaire and a researcher-made questionnaire for measuring economic, cultural and social capitals. 52.4 percent of respondents were girls and 47.6 percent were boys and the mean of age was 22.58. Content validity of questionnaires was assured. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was calculated. The results of Cronbach’s alpha coefficient show that questions are internally correlated. The analysis of data is carried out at descriptive and inferential statistics levels. It should be mentioned that the variables such as level of cultural capital and social capital are examined through Likert scale. Total scores in each scale is calculated and considered as interval variables. Discussion of Results and Conclusions Descriptive findings show that rate of happiness and all three kinds of capitals are on average. Findings also show that all three capitals have meaningful and direct relationships with happiness. Findings of multiple regression technique show that the rate of social capital has the most impact on happiness. After that, cultural capital has the most effect. Through path analysis, is became clear that cultural capital has a great effect on happiness in an indirect way. Likewise, social capital has a great effect on happiness. That means by reinforcing this kind of capital among people we have a happier society. Overall, R squared was 22/5 which shows that social capital, cultural capital and economic capital explain 22/5 percent of happiness variance. Other researches like Richard Rose (2000) concluded that social capital has greater effect on happiness than other variables. He believed that social capital includes social relational networks, friendships and social trust. Social networks provide a great amount of social and mental support. In our research, economic capital has the least effect on happiness among independent variables. Various studies show that money is necessary to happiness but only a certain amount of money. Some researchers believe that by increasing their wealth, people become happier. However, after getting to a certain point, we no longer observe more happiness.