The present study was conducted with the sole aim to analyze the relationship of social capital and subjective well-being in rural communities at Upper Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan with a conceptual framework comprised of independent variables i.e. “social relations, civic engagement, neighborhood trust, institutional trust, access to health, access to education, leisure time and dependent variable i.e. “subjective well-being in rural communities” respectively. A sample size of 473 respondents was selected randomly from the 214,713 population of two Tehsils namely Khwazakehla and Matta respectively. Further, a well-structured interview schedule encompassing all the study variables was used for primary data collection. Furthermore, the data was coded into SPSS for further analysis i.e. univariate, bivariate and multivariate analysis. The study concluded that the participants did not trust the systems, i.e. education, politics, media, civil organization, and parliament. However, only two systems have been trusted so far i.e. the bank and the court in the study area. Also, the participants were somewhat happy with the fact that there were enough educational institutions for both men and women, and that the government was taking steps to make the general public more aware of different topics or issues. Besides, the cost of quality educational institutions was reasonable, and there was a good system for getting people from marginalized communities into educational institutions. However, the participants were not satisfied with the allocation of budget from the government side for the promotion of universal education. Moreover, some macro and micro level policy recommendations were also put forward for governmental, non-governmental and communal level for boosting the subjective well-being of the rural community.

Keywords: Institutional Trust, Subjective Well-being, Bivariate and Multivariate Analyses.