Social Capital, the Quality of Social Networks and Redistribution Preferences: Evidence from the International Social Survey Programme

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Social capital can be a useful asset in the labor market. Individuals who have more or better-quality connections in their social networks have an easier time finding employment. Since they face a lower probability of unemployment, one might expect them to express less support for redistributive tax policies. Using survey data from 20 advanced industrialized countries included in the 2006 Role of Government module of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), I find some evidence that individuals with better-quality social networks tend to oppose increasing taxes on the rich and lowering taxes on the poor, and that they believe the government ought to be responsible for providing jobs to those who want them, and for ensuring a decent living standard for the unemployed. At the same time, I find that higher social network quality does not appear to correlate with an individual’s belief that the government ought to reduce income differences, or increase spending on unemployment benefits. The social network quality measures do not, however, appear to increase the explanatory power of regression models significantly, indicating that any implied effects are fairly tenuous.