Social Capital, Poverty and Social Exclusion in Italy

Abstract

The paper investigates the relationship between social capital and the standard living of the Italian households based on poverty and social exclusion. The analysis is developed at the regional level through cross-sections based in the year 2002 and in the year 2003. The indices of social capital that we use are the associational activity a la Putnam and a new proxy based on the regional density of industrial districts. By using the empirical model advanced by Grootaert (2001) we find that our results confirm the theory of social capital and poverty transition mechanism advanced by Narayan and Woolcock (2000). Moreover we find significant and negative correlation between social capital and the measures of social exclusion. All these results drive the paper to the conclusion that social capital is positively correlated to higher level of living standard.