Prefecture-level Social Capital in Japan : An Interdisciplinary Perspective

Taking a holistic and interdisciplinary approach, this study examines prefecture-level social capital in Japan in terms of its relationships with numerous variables including demographic, environmental, public health, and socio-economic indicators. The ecologic study design was adopted whereby regression analyses and Spearman’s Correlation Coefficient were carried out to appraise the goodness of fit and inter-variable relationships.
The results illuminated the relative fitness and negative correlation between bonding social capital, on the one hand, and the “Ratio of never-married population (male; 30-34 years of age)” as well as that for never-married males in the age bracket of 45 to 49, respectively, on the other. In effect, the former variable, males in the age bracket of 30 to 34, showed the highest values both in terms of R2 and rs. Moreover, from the perspective of public health and safety, the results between bonding social capital and “Ratio of felonies to criminal cases” were also critical for their potential applicability for effective public policy planning. It is also remarkable that “Ratio of psychiatric patients per full-time physician” was the only variable that resulted in a notable outcome with bridging social capital, out of the total of 429 variables.

本論文の著作権は日本国際教養学会（JAILA）に属する