Abstract
In early 2020, the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern. The South African government had to swiftly implement a lockdown in order to minimise the risk of the spread of COVID-19. The first major COVID-19 lockdown was implemented on 27 March 2020 and was an unexpected shock to South Africans. Social capital, especially when it comes to social relationships and social connectedness, is important for happiness and plays a vital role in defining happiness. The lockdown may have negatively impacted the social relationships and social interactions of South Africans. This minor dissertation aims to investigate whether the relationship between social capital and Gross National Happiness (GNH) has changed in a developing country, South Africa, after the first major COVID-19 lockdown was implemented. In order to achieve this, I use daily data for the year 2020 and compare the before and after effects of the first major COVID-19 lockdown on the relationship between social capital and happiness, using a lockdown dummy variable in an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimation technique. This is one of the first studies to investigate the relationship between happiness and social capital before and after the first major COVID-19 lockdown for a developing country, South Africa. Furthermore, the study is one of the few studies that uses Big Data from Google Trends and the GNH.today project to derive the variables that have been included in the analyses. My results show a positive relationship between lockdown and happiness. Thus, for the period after the first lockdown until the end of 2020 (during this period the stringency of the lockdown was relaxed) the GNH of South Africans was higher than for the period before 27 March 2020, which was the day lockdown had commenced. In the regressions I considered the following social capital variables: ‘lonely’, ‘charity’, ‘outdoor activities’, ‘freedom’ and ‘social support’ and found that ‘charity’, ‘outdoor activities’, ‘freedom’ and ‘social support’ had the expected positive relationship when testing the relationship between social capital variables and happiness. For the period including and after 27 March 2020, which is the period with different stringency levels of lockdown, I found negative relationships between the social capital variables and happiness. As a result of these findings, and the knowledge that people feel lonelier during lockdown periods, policy-makers should implement policies that support building social capital in South Africa, such as creating a helpline to assist people mentally and emotionally, planning exciting online social events, and approving the bubble system where families and friends may visit together in small safe groups, thus strengthening relationships. Social capital can play a role when it comes to the growth of an economy, as studies have proven that happier people are more productive. Policy-makers should invest more time and money in happiness research in order to strengthen social capital bonds within communities.
Keywords: Happiness, Social Capital, COVID-19, Big Data, Lockdown, JEL classification codes: C55, D71, I12, I31.