Improving Women’s Happiness and Self-Rated Health and Social Capital in Rural Cambodia

Abstract

Achieving a state of happiness and good health is undoubtedly important for people’s mental health. It is a challenging feat in any country, but more so in developing countries. However, scant research exists on the happiness and self-rated health of people in developing countries. To examine the impact of social capital on women’s happiness and self-rated health in rural Cambodia, this study applies ordinal logit regression on the interview data of 283 women living in Siem Reap. The following factors positively impacted the happiness of the women: high household income, lending of money to others, high level of trust toward family, social participation, and having high self-rated health. The following factors were associated with higher self-rated health, similarly as with happiness: high level of trust toward family, lending of money to others, social participation, and higher number of surviving children. However, self-rated health decreased when the women were of advanced age, had given birth to many children, or had received poverty identification. The novelty of this study is that it provides a valuable insight into the impact of social capital on the happiness and self-rated health of women in rural Cambodian villages.