Thispaper attemptsto explain international trendsand differencesin subjective well-being
over the final fifth of the twentieth century. This is done in several stages. First there is a
brief review of some reasons for giving a central role to subjective measures of well-being.
This is followed by sections containing a survey of earlier empirical studies, a description of
the main variables used in this study, a report of results and tests, discussion of the links
among social capital, education and well-being, and concluding comments. The main
innovation of the paper, relative to earlier studies of subjective well-being, lies in its use of
large international samples of individual respondents, thus permitting the simultaneous
identification of individual-level and societal-level determinants of well-being. This is
particularly useful in identifying direct and indirect linkages between social capital and wellbeing.