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Social capital I: measurement and associations with economic mobility.
- Source :
-
Nature [Nature] 2022 Aug; Vol. 608 (7921), pp. 108-121. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 Aug 01. - Publication Year :
- 2022
-
Abstract
- Social capital-the strength of an individual's social network and community-has been identified as a potential determinant of outcomes ranging from education to health <superscript>1-8</superscript> . However, efforts to understand what types of social capital matter for these outcomes have been hindered by a lack of social network data. Here, in the first of a pair of papers <superscript>9</superscript> , we use data on 21 billion friendships from Facebook to study social capital. We measure and analyse three types of social capital by ZIP (postal) code in the United States: (1) connectedness between different types of people, such as those with low versus high socioeconomic status (SES); (2) social cohesion, such as the extent of cliques in friendship networks; and (3) civic engagement, such as rates of volunteering. These measures vary substantially across areas, but are not highly correlated with each other. We demonstrate the importance of distinguishing these forms of social capital by analysing their associations with economic mobility across areas. The share of high-SES friends among individuals with low SES-which we term economic connectedness-is among the strongest predictors of upward income mobility identified to date <superscript>10,11</superscript> . Other social capital measures are not strongly associated with economic mobility. If children with low-SES parents were to grow up in counties with economic connectedness comparable to that of the average child with high-SES parents, their incomes in adulthood would increase by 20% on average. Differences in economic connectedness can explain well-known relationships between upward income mobility and racial segregation, poverty rates, and inequality <superscript>12-14</superscript> . To support further research and policy interventions, we publicly release privacy-protected statistics on social capital by ZIP code at https://www.socialcapital.org .<br /> (© 2022. The Author(s).)
- Subjects :
- Adult
Child
Community-Institutional Relations
Datasets as Topic
Geographic Mapping
Humans
Poverty statistics & numerical data
Racism
Social Media statistics & numerical data
Social Support
United States
Volunteers
Economic Status statistics & numerical data
Friends
Income statistics & numerical data
Social Capital
Social Mobility statistics & numerical data
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1476-4687
- Volume :
- 608
- Issue :
- 7921
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Nature
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 35915342
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04996-4