Measuring the Social Effects on Economics Growth (Case of Iran)

Nowadays the term social capital has become one of the most important, common and applied concepts in the social sciences. New economic and sociology researches show that social capital affects the essential economic variables. In this article, four indices are being chosen as the main indices of social capital: trust, social participation, civilian cooperation and honesty. And the quantitative value of any of these indices is measured by a questionnaire. The questionnaire was distributed among inhabitants in the centers of provinces through cluster sampling. Simultaneously, the AHP matrix was sent to the researchers of social capital. The weight of any of these indices in social capital was extracted by using the geometric average of the researcher's judgments. The quantitative value of social capital is achieved by using two instruments as follows: 1) the result of questionnaire analysis and 2) the weights which were resulted from AHP matrix. Finally, the effect of any of those chosen indices and the final value of social capital on economic growth was measured by E-views software through using the conventional economic growth model and cross section data of 1385 for any of the provinces.The Results show that social capital has some positive and significant effects on economic growth.