The institutional embeddedness of social capital: A multi-level investigation across 24 European countries

This study contributes to earlier studies aimed at the question of whether the welfare state crowds out social capital or not by examining to what extent the welfare state affects the value of social capital. This article investigates the effects of three sources of social capital on occupational prestige and tests whether these effects are moderated by welfare state effort in terms of social spending. Multi-level analyses based on European Social Survey (ESS) 2002/03 and International Monetary Fund (IMF) data, including 39,299 people from 24 European countries, provides evidence that welfare state effort decreases the value of social capital.