An encomium for communitarianism

The Atlantic praises Rod Dreher's new memoir, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming:

...  That's because community is strongly connected to well-being. In a 2004 study, social scientists John Helliwell and Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, examined the well-being of a large sample of people in Canada, the United States, and in 49 nations around the world. They found that social connections -- in the form of marriage, family, ties to friends and neighbors, civic engagement, workplace ties, and social trust -- "all appear independently and robustly related to happiness and life satisfaction, both directly and through their impact on health."

In Canada and the United States, having frequent contact with neighbors was associated with higher levels of well-being, as was the feeling of truly belonging in a group. "If everyone in a community becomes more connected, the average level of subjective well-being would increase," they wrote.

This may explain why Latin Americans, who live in a part of the world fraught with political and economic problems, but strong on social ties, are the happiest people in the world, according to Gallup