The role of partnership, parenting and social capital in wellbeing

Abstract

Our analysis of the relational factors involved in subjective wellbeing was inspired by global social practices of restricting physical interactions in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Restrictive measures are supposed to constrain interactions to the household and at the same hinder social intercourse that normally occurs as a feature of the three types of social capital. The empirical basis of the analysis is the large-sample Hungarian micro census of 2016 (N=2 724 000) which makes it possible to examine how life satisfaction, i.e. the cognitive dimension of subjective wellbeing among 20–49-year-olds connects on the one hand to the relational factors represented by partnership-parenting status, and on the other hand to the relational factors implicated in the three types of social capital. The starting point of our analysis is evidence concerning the connection in the Hungarian context between life satisfaction, partnership status and parenting status, respectively. (Rövid 2020). The central question of our analysis is to what extent the life satisfaction level of individuals living in households differentiated by partnership and parenting status is connected to their practice of physical social interactions beyond the household. Our results show that relational factors, implicated in the pandemic, play a similar role in the case of singles and single parents, and also among those living in partnership, irrespective of parental status. We find that partnership has an outstanding role in subjective wellbeing, which highlights the significance of both the quality as well as the vulnerability of partnerships (Erát 2020). These results also provide the grounds for hypotheses that can be explored in further research: our overall hypothesis is that the pandemic, through its restrictive effect on relational factors beyond the household, substantially diminishes life satisfaction among 20–49 year-olds, with significant differences according to the partnership and parenting status of individuals.