Social Capital and the Generation of Human Capital

Abstract

We make use of a large sample of data taken from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey, to examine the effects of various measures of financial, human and social capital on the likelihood of dropping out of school. We test whether social capital mediates the effect of parental financial and human capital on leaving school. The findings indicate that both more general measures of social capital (attending a Catholic school, family structure) and more specific measures of social capital (parentchild and parent-school interaction) are related to dropping out of high school. The findings also indicate that social capital interacts with the financial and human capital of parents to determine school continuation. In reaction to the influence of economic theory on sociological thought, Coleman (1988) argues that the well-known concepts of financial and human capital (cf., Becker 1964, 1991) should be supplemented by the concept of social capital when attempting to explain human action. Coleman bases his argument on the selfevident fact that persons' actions are shaped by social context and not simply by the financial and human resources available to them. In this article, we test Coleman's argument by making use of a large sample of data taken from the National Educational Longitudinal Study to evaluate the joint impact of financial, human, and social capital on the creation of human capital in the next generation. In addition, we move beyond the simple consideration of the marginal effect of social capital by seeking to determine whether social capital