This paper explores whether the concept of social capital as popularized by Robert Putnam is a good social science concept. Taking Gerring’s work on concept evaluation as the starting point, the paper first presents a set of criteria for conceptual ‘goodness’ and discusses how social...

The scope of this study ranges from the identification of key drivers of living conditions from a wide spectrum of context-based indicators to the development of a concrete composite measure of living conditions within the framework of a multivariate analysis. The Living Conditions Index (LCI)...