Comparison of the effects of homeownership by individuals and their neighbors on social capital formation: Evidence from Japanese General Social Surveys

Abstract

This paper, using individual data from Japan, explores how the circumstances of where a person resides is related to the degree of their investment in social capital.Controlling for unobserved area-specific fixed effects and various individual characteristics, I found: (1) Not only is the rate of homeowners in a locality positively related to investment in social capital, but the rate of homeownership there increases an individual"s investment in social capital. (2) The effect of local neighborhood homeownership is distinctly larger than that of an individual"s when endogeneity bias is controlled for using instruments such as land price and the rental price of an apartment.

Effect of Professional Sports Teams on Social Capital Formation: Comparison Between Football and Baseball in Japan

“…This is in line with the hypothesis. Concerning control variables, the coefficient of Marry is positive and significant when Football play and Baseball play are dependent variables, which is congruent to the prediction from Yamamura (2011). Consistent with the prediction from DiPasquale and Glaeser (1999) and Yamamura (2011), the coefficient of Homeowner is positive.…”

“…Concerning control variables, the coefficient of Marry is positive and significant when Football play and Baseball play are dependent variables, which is congruent to the prediction from Yamamura (2011). Consistent with the prediction from DiPasquale and Glaeser (1999) and Yamamura (2011), the coefficient of Homeowner is positive. It is interesting to observe that Homeowner is statistically significant at the 1 % level when Baseball play is a dependent variable, but not significant when Football play is a dependent variable.…”

“…Some of these control variables are related to social capital formation. In general, married people seem to have greater social recognition and hence, are inclined to mingle with other community members (Yamamura 2011). Therefore, Marry is predicted to be positively associated with the dependent variables.…”

“…The homeowner dummy is included because homeowners are less likely to change their residential home and so the importance of relationships with neighbors increases (DiPasquale and Glaeser 1999; Yamamura 2011). Consequently, homeowners are inclined to invest in social capital (DiPasquale and Glaeser 1999;Yamamura 2011). Hence, homeowner is expected to be positively associated with the dependent variables.…”

The Socioeconomic, Demographic, and Political Effects of Housing in Comparative Perspective

“…However, Manturuk et al (2012) find homeowners do have more neighborhood-based social capital than renters, but only in formal neighborhood organizations, not in informal interactions with neighbors. At issue in these studies is whether social capital is a consequence of homeownership versus a function of selection into homeownership (Yamamura 2011). Some studies find that apparent homeownership effects disappear after adjusting for omitted variable bias for outcomes like voluntarism (Peek 2011) and political engagement (Engelhardt et al 2010).…”