Giulia Slater

Publications

O'Connor, K., Riillo, C., & Slater, G. (2025). Employee dissatisfaction and intentions to quit: New evidence and policy recommendations. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy. doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2024-0293
Slater, G. (2024). The effects of social capital deprivation for wellbeing: evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic. Economics & Human Biology, 101395. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101395 [Paper]
Bartolini, S., Piekalkiewicz, M., Sarracino, F., Slater, G. (2023). The moderation effect of social capital in the relationship between own income, social comparisons and subjective well-being: Evidence from four international datasets. PLoS ONE 18(12): e0288455. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288455 [Paper]

Book Chapters

O'Connor, K., Peroni, C., Sarracino, F., Slater, G., Wu, F. (2025). "Supporting Others: How pro-social behaviour reduces deaths of despair". in Helliwell, J. F., Layard, R., Sachs, J. D., De Neve, J. E., Aknin, L. B., & Wang, S (Eds.). World Happiness Report 2025: Caring and Sharing. Chapter 6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18724/whr-t5h9-dj68

Sarracino, F., & Slater, G. (2025). "The trust paradox". In A Research Agenda for Social Capital in Economic Development. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Sarracino, F., & Slater, G. (2024). "Social capital and Subjective Well-being" Chapter in: Brockmann, H. & Fernandez-Urbano, R. (Eds.). (2024). Encyclopedia of happiness, quality of life and subjective wellbeing. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Working papers

O’Connor, K., Riillo, C., & Slater, G. (2024). Dissatisfied employees are three times more likely to quit. [Paper]
Sarracino, F., & Slater, G. (2024). The trust paradox. [paper]
Bartolini, S., Sarracino, F., & Slater, G. (2020). Do epidemics impose a trade-off between freedom and health? Evidence from Europe during Covid-19. [Paper]

Awards & Recognition

Best dissertation award (3rd place), International society for quality of life studies, 2024
Post-Doctoral Research fellow, International society for quality of life studies, 2024

Thesis Outline

My research aim is to contribute to the public and scientific debate on the importance of including wellbeing and social capital measures in the evaluation of a country's policies implementation and performance. What I addressed in my PhD thesis, and would like to tackle in the future as researcher, are empirical questions that aim at proving that social capital has a beneficial role for wellbeing and allows for wellbeing resilience.

In particular, the first paper entitled “Social capital reduces the impact of social comparisons on subjective wellbeing: Evidence from international datasets”, uses EU-SILC, ESS and EVS-WVS cross-sectional data, and German SOEP panel data to show that social capital changes the association between income and subjective wellbeing, and the one between social comparisons and subjective wellbeing. The paper also tests the hypothesis that at the macro-level, in countries that are rich in social capital, the differences in subjective wellbeing between income groups are small, which is a consequence of the relatively smaller impact that income and social comparisons exert on wellbeing. The second paper, entitled “The wellbeing effects of social capital in times of a health crisis: the case of the Covid-19 pandemic”, uses monthly UKHLS data to assess whether social capital influenced the way people fared throughout the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper provides a theoretical intuition of the mechanisms via which social capital affects wellbeing and mental health in times of a health crisis, and provides evidence that social capital is beneficial to subjective wellbeing as it allows resilience. The third paper, entitled “Loneliness increases the probability of worse mental distress development during Covid-19” is a replication study that uses latent class analysis, a non-parametric model, to explore the heterogeneity in mental distress development in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic. It subsequently relates individuals’ loneliness, a measure of lack of social capital, to the probability of being on either class of distress development. Results suggest that the probability of being on a trajectory of continuously high distress was significantly higher for people who are often or sometimes lonely, compared to non-lonely people. The last paper, entitled “Do epidemics impose a trade-off between freedom and health? Evidence from Europe during Covid-19” analyses whether the extent to which governments imposed stringent containment policies in face of the pandemic was determined by the trust levels of citizens. Additionally it tests whether less stringent containment policies came at the expense of health. The findings suggest the trade-off between freedom and health depends on the levels of trust, in particular that the trade-off reduces with higher levels of trust. The conclusions of these papers all point to the need of promoting social capital as a critical element for people’s and societal wellbeing.

Social capital reduces the impact of social comparisons on subjective well-being - Social comparisons have severe negative consequences for happiness, health, and economic decisions. Is there a remedy? Some research suggests that social comparisons are intrinsic human characteristics rooted in the biology of the brain. The paper tests an alternative view using approximately 400000 interviews from nationally representative surveys. Specifically, it assesses whether people with high social capital suffer less from social comparisons than others. Controlling for demographic factors, the finding is that socially isolated people are more likely to be concerned about whether they earn more or less than others. Conversely, keeping up with the Joneses matters less for the well-being of individuals with high social capital. This result is reflected at country level: in countries that are rich in social capital, the differences in well-being between income groups are small, which is a consequence of the relatively small impact of social comparisons on well-being. This evidence suggests that social capital attenuates the negative consequences of social comparisons for subjective well-being.
The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on mental health in UK: an analysis of the role of social capital - Objectives: To assess the role of social capital in the relation between the Covid-19 pandemic and mental health in the United Kingdom. Methods: I use data on 7561 individual questionnaires from the UK nationally representative Understanding Society dataset between 2019 and early 2021. I perform Mundlak corrected difference in difference estimation on a panel of individuals to assess whether people with different levels of social capital suffered diverse effect on their mental health. Results: People with strong personal relationships suffered the mental health effects of the pandemic more than those who are endowed with less social capital, in almost each month of the pandemic year. Individuals who are usually highly engaged in associational activities suffered more in at the beginning (April and May 2020) and at the end of the period (November 2021 and January 2021) than those who are not. Having a good attitude and a good relationship with neighbours does not produce any significant difference in mental health trajectory during the analysed period. Results also show that having high social capital, especially strong personal relations, allows for lower suffering compared to people who have no social capital. This suggests that even in times of hardship when one cannot enjoy such social capital, it still is a powerful resilience tool towards negative effects on wellbeing. Conclusion: Highly endowed social capital individuals have suffered the mental health consequences of the pandemic more than those who usually do no enjoy it, when comparing to their own level in pre-pandemic periods. They however also still suffered less than those who do not have any resilience tool, i.e. those with no social capital. Contagion containment policies should consider the diverse effects they have on mental health of the population outside the standard determinants of poor mental health.
Do epidemics impose a trade-off between freedom and health? Evidence from Europe during Covid-19 - The extent to which governments' policies for the containment of Covid-19 relied on voluntary compliance or on enforced social and economic restrictions, differs substantially across countries. Why so? The answer to this question is important because economic and psychological costs of an epidemic surge with the severity of restrictions. As the risk of infections increased in recent decades, it is critical to understand what enables a society to contain epidemics with mild restrictions of citizens' freedoms. Our answer is that trust in others and in public institutions allows for less stringent containment policies. We collected data on policy stringency, speed of decline of new contagions and mortality during the first wave of Covid-19 in Europe. After accounting for various confounding factors, we find that governments of more trustful countries introduced less stringent policies, burdening the society with lower economic and psychological costs. This did not come at the expense of public health: holding policy stringency constant, high trust countries report lower mortality, as well as lower number and faster decline of new contagions than others. We conclude that the trade-off between freedom and health during epidemics depends on a country's trust level: the more people trust others and institutions, the more this trade-off fades. Therefore, promoting trust in others and in institutions is a critical challenge for contemporary societies

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