Social Capital Measures Research Articles

Exploring Network Measures of Social Capital: Toward More Relational Measurement

Although social capital is a relational concept, existing studies have focused less on measuring social relations. This article fills the gap by reviewing recent studies that used network measures grouped into three types according to the measurement level. The first group defined social capital as an individual asset and used node-level measures to explain personal benefits. The second group defined social capital as a collective asset and used graph-level measures to describe collective properties. The third group used subgraph-level measures to explain the development of social capital. This article offers a link between the concepts and measures of social capital.

Social capital as a partial explanation for gender wage gaps.

Despite a long record of research on the sources of the gender wage gap, a large fraction of gender wage differences remains unexplained. In this paper, we propose gender differences in social capital as a novel explanation for the gender wage gap. We use British data from the Understanding Society (UKHLS) survey and wage decompositions to estimate the contribution of social capital derived from network homophily, that is, the similarity to one's peer group, to the gender wage differential. Our results show that differences in network structure explain as much as 15% of the overall gender wage gap. This finding is largely driven by gender differences in the number of males among closest friends, while other social capital measures used in this study hardly matter. We further show that differences in returns to social capital are not statistically significant.

A Multilevel Perspective on the Health Effect of Social Capital: Evidence for the Relative Importance of Individual Social Capital over Neighborhood Social Capital

Employing a multilevel perspective on the health effects of social capital, this study analyzes how individual and neighborhood differences in self-rated health in Ghent (Belgium), relate to individual and collective social mechanisms, when taking demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of individuals into account. This study estimates the health effects of social trust, informal social control and disorder at the neighborhood level and social support and network size at the individual level, using indicators indebted to both the normative and resource-based approaches to social capital. Instead of the mere aggregation of individual indicators of social capital, this study uses the key informant technique as a methodologically superior measurement of neighborhood social capital, which combined with a multilevel analysis strategy, allows to disentangle the health effects of individual and neighborhood social capital. The analysis highlights the health benefits of individual social capital, i.e., individual social support and network size. The study indicates that controlling for individual demographic and socioeconomic characteristics reduces the effect of the neighborhood-level counterparts and the neighborhood characteristics social trust and neighborhood disorder have significant, but small health effects. In its effects on self-rated health, social capital operates on the individual level, rather than the neighborhood level.

How social capital helps communities weather the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why have the effects of COVID-19 been so unevenly geographically distributed in the United States? This paper investigates the role of social capital as a mediating factor for the spread of the virus. Because social capital is associated with greater trust and relationships within a community, it could endow individuals with a greater concern for others, thereby leading to more hygienic practices and social distancing. Using data for over 2,700 US counties, we investigate how social capital explains the level and growth rate of infections. We find that moving a county from the 25th to the 75th percentile of the distribution of social capital would lead to a 18% and 5.7% decline in the cumulative number of infections and deaths, as well as suggestive evidence of a lower spread of the virus. Our results are robust to many demographic characteristics, controls, and alternative measures of social capital.

Effects of social network incentives and financial incentives on physical activity and social capital among older women: a randomized controlled trial

BackgroundFinancial incentives have been used to increase physical activity. However, the benefit of financial incentives is lost when an intervention ends. Thus, for this study, we combined social network incentives that leverage the power of peer pressure with financial incentives. Few reports have examined the impact of physical activity on social capital. Therefore, the main goal of this study was to ascertain whether a combination of two incentives could lead to more significant changes in physical activity and social capital during and after an intervention.MethodsThe participants were 39 older women over 65 years of age in Kumamoto, Japan. The participants were randomly divided into a financial incentive group (FI group) and a social network incentive plus financial incentive group (SNI + FI group). Both groups underwent a three-month intervention. Measurements of physical activity and social capital were performed before and after the intervention. Additionally, the effects of the incentives on physical activity and social capital maintenance were measured 6 months postintervention. The financial incentive group received a payment ranging from US$4.40 to US$6.20 per month, depending on the number of steps taken during the intervention. For the other group, we provided a social network incentive in addition to the financial incentive. The SNI + FI group walked in groups of three people to use the power of peer pressure.ResultsA two-way ANOVA revealed that in terms of physical activity, there was a statistically significant interaction between group and time (p = 0.017). The FI group showed no statistically significant improvement in physical activity during the observation period. In terms of the value of social capital, there was no significant interaction between group and time.ConclusionOur results suggest that social network incentives, in combination with financial incentives, are more effective for promoting physical activity than financial incentives alone among older women and that these effects can continue after an intervention. In the meantime, further studies should be conducted on the effect of physical activity on social capital.Trial registrationUMIN000038080, registered on 09/22/2019 (Retrospectively registered).

The Interactive Effect of Social Capital and Duration of Migration on Suicidal Behaviors Among Rural-to-Urban Migrants in China: Evidence from a GIS/GPS-Assisted Probability Sample.

Suicide for rural-to-urban migrants in China presents a challenge. Social capital as a modifiable factor is associated with suicidal behaviors at different levels for different populations. This study focuses on the social capital-suicidal behavior relationship among rural migrants with detailed social capital measures and their interaction with migration duration. Data were collected from a rural migrant sample in Wuhan, China. Outcome variable was reported suicidal ideation and attempts in the past 12 months. Social capital was measured using the Personal Social Capital Scale. Year of migration was measured as the number of years a subject migrated to the city. Multivariate logistic regression (coefficients [95%CIs]) was used for data analysis. Time of crossover for interaction was estimated as the year when the effect of social capital on a suicidal behavior revered from negative to positive. Study findings show a negative association between social capital and suicidal ideation (-1.48 [-2.86, -0.10]), but the association was not significant for suicidal attempts (-1.30 [-2.68, 0.08]) after considering the positive interaction between social capital and year of migration (0.11 [0.03, 0.19] for ideation and 0.11 [0.02, 0.19] for attempts). Similar effects were found for detailed social capital measures. The estimated time of crossover ranged from 7.0 to 14.8 years for different social capital measures. The findings of this study confirm the protective relationship between social capital and suicidal behaviors in the early years of migration among rural migrants. These findings inform suicide prevention among rural migrants by considering social capital during the first 7 to 15 years of migration.

Social Capital and Subjective Social Status: Heterogeneity within East Asia

Previous studies have documented the associations of objective class with either social capital or subjective social status, yet little attention has been paid to the direct connections between social capital and subjective social status. This study highlights social capital as an essential source of subjective social status, particularly in East Asia, whose member societies have shared similarities but also developed distinctive social and cultural contexts. We investigate how individuals differently perceive their own subjective social status by their social capital and hypothesize that such associations vary across four societies. By analyzing Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese samples of the 2012 East Asian Social Survey, we examine bonding, bridging, and cognitive dimensions of social capital and their connections to subjective perceptions of social status, after controlling for objective class measures. As hypothesized, the results underscore the varying patterns of the associations between social capital and subjective social status across four societies. For instance, individuals who develop wider social connections with people occupying high-status occupations tend to rank themselves higher on a subjective social-status scale in Chinese societies only, where social connections particularly play an important role. Having trustworthy relatives and friends is associated with higher subjective social status in Taiwan and Korea, where members are less tolerant of ambiguity than China. None of the social capital measures matters in Japan, the most individualistic society in East Asia. The findings of this study improve our understandings of subjective social status by emphasizing individuals’ embeddedness in social relationships and broader cultural contexts.

Covid Alone: The Complementarity Between Social Capital and Formal Public Health Rules in the United States

The spread of COVID-19 provides a unique opportunity to explore the interactive effect of formal and informal rules. While economists and public health scholars realize the independent effects social capital and stringent public health rules have on prevalence and mortality rates, we advance this literature with a novel framework to analyze the interaction between the two. With state-level data on daily COVID-19 cases, a measure of policy stringency, and various measures of social capital, we find that prevalence rates fall by a larger amount in states where people place a higher value on COVID-19 prevention, where public health measures are more stringent, and where there are higher levels of social capital. We estimate that states with higher values for prevention and higher social capital experienced 81 fewer new daily COVID-19 cases per million. The main results are robust to the inclusion of relevant controls, various specifications, and alternative measures of social capital. These results suggest that individuals and the communities they enter into and exit out of play an important role in the spread and prevention of infectious diseases independent of formal, governmental public health responses.

Social Disparities and Social Distancing During the Covid Pandemic

While social capital is commonly held to support collective action, according to Putnam (2000) and Bourdieu (1986) social disparities may result in the formation of narrow social bonds that serve to exacerbate existing social cleavages and may serve as an impediment to effective collective action. Motivated by this insight, we examine the relationship between social disparities and social distancing during the initial, pre-vaccine period of the Covid pandemic in the US. Using a panel of weekly, county-level observations, we find that income, educational and racial disparities are associated with a statistically significant decrease in the social distancing. This result is robust to controls for a wide variety of socioeconomic variables as well as to the contemporaneous infection rate and a commonly used measures of social capital. Our results are consistent with Putnam and Bourdieu’s claims regarding the role of social disparities in the formation of social capital and suggest gains to the development of measures that capture different forms of social capital.

Do Third Places Matter?: The Effects of Foot Traffic Concentration in Gathering Places on Financial Distress and Physical Health in Communities

Do third places (e.g. cafes, taverns, diners) matter in communities? We propose that when foot-traffic are concentrated in third places in a community, incidental interactions among strangers and place attachment flourish. Using data on billions of cell phone interactions, we introduce a new measure called ``Third Places Foot-Traffic Concentration'' (TPFC). After controlling for community demographic characteristics, the stringency of COVID precautions, and established measures of neighborhood social capital, we find that TPFC is related to lower personal bankruptcy rates, COVID-19 infections, and deaths in communities. However, these effects of TPFC weaken as the degree of racial residential segregation in a community increases. Taken together, our results suggest that third places act as sociological WD-40 that foster incidental interactions, and thereby, complement other conventional sources of neighborhood social capital.

Inclusive Finance Credit Behaviours and Income Inequality: Matter of Social Capital?

A large body of evidences found that social capital contributed to credit constraints and welfares. However, we link villagers and households samples across China and account for multi-dimension social capital measurement error through seemly-unrelated three-stage least squares. We show that individual social capital, an individual comparative advantages resource, adversely affected credit behaviours and income distributions. To assessment the importance of community social capital for poor households, we address endogenous by instruments variables quantile regression. Then find that the external human capital mechanism of community social capital improves income and credit access. Update evaluation implies that social capital is not always favorable to income equality and credit access.

Measurement of Social Capital in Water Users Association through Analytical Hierarchy Process

This study aims to construct by using the social capital index through the identified major components and subcomponents in the watershed context by using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). It was introduced by Satty, for decision making by considering the complex elements involved in the process. This was done through pairwise comparison of the judgments of experts. The empirical findings indicate that among the six major components the level of derived benefits was assigned with high weightage as a contributing component in the social capital index followed by the level of involvement, level of collective management, level of trust.

Depressive Symptom Profile Transitions From Midlife to Late Life in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study

Late-life depression is a significant public health problem among the growing elderly population in the United States. Structural social capital has previously been associated with lowering depressive symptoms in later life, but these results have been inconsistent. However, few studies have investigated this association when investigating different subtypes of depression. The current study used data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) of 3,197 respondents to examine how structural social capital influences baseline depression statuses and transitions in these depression statuses. Latent class and latent transition analysis (LCA/LTA) were used to identify latent statuses at two time points in the WLS – 1992 and 2011 – as well as transitions between those statuses. Four depression statuses were identified at both time points: Very Depressed, Depressed and Lonely, Agitated and Restless, and Not Depressed. Gender, self-rated health, total assets, structural social capital measures, and polygenic score for depression were all predictors of baseline depression statuses. Transitions between depression statuses were associated with two forms of structural social capital – social support and social involvement. These findings add to the increasing number of studies investigating subtypes of depression in older adults as well as to scholars examining the association between structural social capital and depressive symptoms. Results suggest possible social and behavioral factors policymakers can use to identify risk of depression in mid-life and areas of intervention to improve depressive symptoms for aging adults.

Social capital as a source of happiness: evidence from a cross-country analysis

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of social capital on happiness. The previous literature generally measures social capital using “generalized trust”, which is a narrow dimension of social capital. In this study, social capital is measured as a multidimensional concept consisting of generalized trust, institutional trust and trust on family, neighborhood and strangers.Design/methodology/approachThis study explores the relationship between social capital and average happiness using a panel data of 89 countries from 1980 to 2017. The empirical analysis is done by employing pooled OLS (POLS), fixed effects method (FEM), random effects method (REM) and system generalized method of moments.FindingsThe findings demonstrate that all measures of social capital are positively associated with happiness while comparatively institutional trust and generalized trust appear more significant for happiness. The findings are robust to different robustness checks. The findings document the importance of social capital for average happiness.Research limitations/implicationsThe research has certain limitations. First, the objective of study was to cover global sample of countries, however, the data series were not available for all countries. Second, the empirical is restricted to global evidence instead of exploring separate estimates for developed and developing world.Originality/valueThe findings document the importance of social capital for average happiness. The awareness of the importance of social capital needs to be increased. Government can develop such organizations or institutions that are conducive for social capital development.

Feeling right at home: Hometown CEOs and firm innovation

Extending the theories of social and place identity, we predict that CEO hometown identity has a positive and significant influence on firm innovation. Our empirical evidence, from publicly traded firms in China during 2002–2016, suggests that a firm whose CEO's hometown is in the same province or city as the firm's headquarters tends to invest more in R&D and generate more patent applications. Our results are robust to the firm fixed effects and we use difference-in-differences analysis and instrument variable regressions to mitigate endogeneity concerns. CEOs' hometown identity still has a strong and positive impact on innovation after we control for measures of social capital of CEOs. We identify the mechanisms behind the positive relation between firm innovation and CEO hometown identity: hometown CEOs enjoy more support from the board of directors, they are more willing to take risks, and they are more likely to have long-term visions.

Mental Health of Chinese Online Networkers under COVID-19: A Sociological Analysis of Survey Data.

This paper reports the results of a recent survey of Chinese WeChat networkers (n = 2015, August 2020) about China’s mental health conditions under COVID-19. The purpose of the survey was to measure symptoms of depression, anxiety, and somatization by using a standard 18-item battery and assess how the results were related to an individual’s socioeconomic status, lifestyle, and social capital under an ongoing pandemic. The survey reveals that the pandemic has had a significant impact, as the respondents had more serious mental symptoms when their residential communities exhibited a greater exposure to the spread of the virus. The socioeconomic status of the respondents was negatively associated with the mental symptoms. It modified the impact of COVID-19, and its effect was substantially mediated by measures of lifestyle and social capital.

Social Capital and Prosocial Behavior among German Children

A robust literature connects children’s and adolescents’ social capital to a range of desirable outcomes, including increased academic achievement and decreased delinquency. We extend this research by extending possible associations with child social capital to positive behaviors, measured here as prosocial behaviors. We examine data on 6th graders in Germany. We select the German context in part because one important source of child social capital, participation in religious congregations, is not as prevalent in modern Germany as in the US samples from which many social capital studies are derived. We use data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and measures of child social capital, including parent–child interactions, family activities, and religious participation, to predict prosocial behavior. Results indicate that social capital in the form of parent-child interactions in the home and child religiosity is associated weakly with greater prosocial behavior. These results suggest that adults can help children develop stronger prosocial norms by increasing interaction with their children and by exposing their children to network ties in religious settings, but also that social capital can be derived different ways in different contexts.

Social capital and health among participants in the cachibol league in Israel

The Israeli cachibol league, Mamanet, is a grass roots non-professional community sports club for mothers. Our aim was to assess if participants in the Mamanet League have higher levels of social capital and if social capital and wellbeing improve with time. Two groups were interviewed: a control group not participating in the league and a group of Mamanet participants. The women were interviewed within 3 months of joining (T1) and 13–15 months later (T2). The questionnaire included questions on sociodemographic characteristics, social capital (social support, social involvement, trust) and wellbeing (self-reported health (SRH), psychosomatic symptoms, depressive symptoms). At T1 the participants had higher social capital and SRH scores than the control group and lower psychosomatic and depressive symptoms compared with the control group. Participation in the Mamanet League seems to improve two of the three social capital measures: social support and social involvement, showing an increase among the Mamanet group over time and no change in the control group. Participation in the league had no significant effect on wellbeing during this period. Women that participate in sports clubs may initially have higher social capital; in addition, participation may increase levels of social capital over time.

Modal sosial dan kemiskinan di Jawa Barat

Artikel ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis pengaruh modal sosial terhadap kemiskinan di Provinsi Jawa Barat. Data penelitian ini berasal dari hasil Survei Sosial Ekonomi Nasional (SUSENAS) yang dilakukan pada tahun 2014. Dalam penelitian ini, variabel modal sosial diwakili oleh empat konsep, yaitu saling percaya, toleransi, kelompok, dan jaringan. Selain itu, studi ini juga menggunakan dua variabel instrumen, yaitu lama tinggal dan lokasi tempat tinggal untuk mengoreksi masalah endogenitas dengan menggunakan model estimasi Instrumental Variable Probit (IVP). Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa modal sosial mempengaruhi kemiskinan secara negatif dan signifikan. Selain itu, lama pendidikan sebagai proksi modal manusia juga secara signifikan mengurangi kemungkinan suatu rumah tangga menjadi miskin. Berdasarkan temuan tersebut, selain meningkatkan kualitas infrastruktur dan memberikan bantuan keuangan untuk pendidikan, lembaga pemerintah di wilayah Jawa Barat juga diharapkan memfasilitasi rumah tangga miskin untuk berpartisipasi secara sosial dan mendorong pengembangan organisasi sosial untuk pengembangan modal sosial dalam upaya untuk mengentaskan kemiskinan di Provinsi Jawa Barat.

When Social Capital Becomes Political Capital: Understanding the Social Contexts of Minority Candidates' Electoral Success in the American States

AbstractPolitical scientists have long been interested in studying the elective office-holding of disadvantaged groups. However, this line of research primarily focuses on the representation of ethnic minorities in the U.S. Congress and identifies three types of determinants of minority candidates' electoral success: the demographic and political make-up of constituents, candidates' personal traits, and macro-level electoral rules. Much less attention is given to minority candidates' electoral success in statehouses. In this paper, we ask: what factors promote the electoral success of minority candidates in state legislatures? Beyond voter characteristics and electoral rules, we attribute minority candidates' electoral success to the social capital possessed by their in-group constituents. We theorize that social capital manifested as civic engagement and social connectedness, can become political capital for minority candidates. Using the Current Population Surveys Civic Engagement Supplement, we validate state-level measures of social capital by race and ethnicity. Linking group social capital to state legislative election outcomes, we find the stock of minority social capital contributes to the electoral success of minority candidates, while white social capital decreases minority candidates' electoral success. Key findings suggest social capital is a form of political capital for disadvantaged groups with private benefits for in-group candidates.