The ties that transplant: The social capital determinants of the living kidney donor relationship distribution

Abstract

The network perspective on social capital decomposes it into ego's network size, alters' relevant resources, and social factors moderating access to alters' resources, but rarely examines how it is distributed across relationship types. Using this approach, I investigate the situationally-relevant social capital relationship distribution and its association with health-related social support, with an application to the living kidney donor relationship distribution. Analyzing an original survey of transplant candidates (N = 72) and their reports on their family and friends (N = 1548), I compare the tie count, donation-relevant biomedical resource, and tie strength relationship distributions to administrative data on the national distribution of living kidney donor relationships. I find that the tie strength relationship distribution matches the completed living kidney donor relationship distribution far better than the tie count and donation-relevant biomedical resource relationship distributions. These conclusions are upheld in race- and gender-stratified analyses and are robust across alternative approaches.