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Social capital I: measurement and associations with economic mobility

Chetty, Raj, Jackson, Matthew O., Kuchler, Theresa, Stroebel, Johannes, Hendren, Nathaniel, Fluegge, Robert B., Gong, Sara, Gonzalez, Federico, Grondin, Armelle, Jacob, Matthew, Johnston, Drew, Koenen, Martin, Laguna-Muggenburg, Eduardo, Mudekereza, Florian, Rutter, Tom, Thor, Nicolaj, Townsend, Wilbur, Zhang, Ruby, Bailey, Mike, Barberá, Pablo, Bhole, Monica, Wernerfelt, Nils·2022·Nature
DOI 10.1038/s41586-022-04996-4PMC PMC9352590
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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 1–8. 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 9, 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 10,11. 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 12–14. To support further research and policy interventions, we publicly release privacy-protected statistics on social capital by ZIP code at https://www.socialcapital.org.

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  • Children whose parents have below-median socioeconomic status are 17% less likely to befriend children from above-median-SES families than they would if friendships were made uniformly by class.

    “Homophily by class is weaker than by race but also significant: data on friendships from Facebook show that children whose parents have below-median socioeconomic status are 17% less likely to befriend children from above-median-SES families than they would if friendships were made uniformly by class(Chetty et al., 2022).”

    From Changing Opportunity: Sociological Mechanisms Underlying Growing Class Gaps and Shrinking Race Gaps in Economic Mobility (2024) · cites this paper as Chetty et al., 2022

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Metadata

Authors
Chetty, R., Jackson, M. O., Kuchler, T., Stroebel, J., Hendren, N., Fluegge, R. B., Gong, S., Gonzalez, F., Grondin, A., Jacob, M., Johnston, D., Koenen, M., Laguna-Muggenburg, E., Mudekereza, F., Rutter, T., Thor, N., Townsend, W., Zhang, R., Bailey, M., Barberá, P., Bhole, M., & Wernerfelt, N.
ORCID
Venue
Nature
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2022-08-01
Volume
608
Issue
7921
Pages
108-121
ISSN
  • 0028-0836
  • 1476-4687
DOI
10.1038/s41586-022-04996-4
PMC
PMC9352590
Cited by
627
References
7
Language
en
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