Homeownership and social capital in New Zealand

Does an individual's housing situation affect community social capital and influence regional development through this channel? A body of literature which followed the seminal work of DiPasquale and Glaeser suggests that homeownership is positively related to social capital formation due to both an increased incentive to engage in the local community and because home ownership creates barriers to mobility. We test the home ownership hypothesis alongside other individual, household and locational determinants of social capital using unique data created by merging the three waves of the New Zealand Quality of Life survey, a local government sponsored survey conducted in 2004, 2006 and 2008. The measures of social capital used in our analysis include trust in others, participation in social networks, attitude towards local governance and sense of community. Because homeownership is not randomly assigned, matching methods are used to control for selection effects.