Social Capital I: Measurement and Associations with Economic Mobility

Raj Chetty, Matthew O. Jackson, Theresa Kuchler, Johannes Stroebel · Large collaboration with 21 listed authors. Additional authors include Nathaniel Hendren, Robert B. Fluegge, Sara Gong, Federico Gonzalez, Armelle Grondin, Matthew Jacob, Drew Johnston, Martin Koenen, Eduardo Laguna-Muggenburg, Florian Mudekereza, Tom Rutter, Nicolaj Thor, Wilbur Townsend, Ruby Zhang, Michael (Mike) Bailey, Pablo Barberá, Monica Bhole, and Nils Wernerfelt.

Published 1 August 2022 · Nature · Journal article

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Summary

Using data on 21 billion Facebook friendships, the authors construct ZIP-code-level measures of three distinct forms of social capital: cross-class connectedness, social cohesion, and civic engagement. They show these measures vary widely across areas and are only weakly correlated with one another. They find that economic connectedness between low- and high-income people is strongly associated with upward income mobility, more so than other forms of social capital.

Key findings

Three forms of social capital (economic connectedness, cohesion, civic engagement) are distinct and weakly correlated across areas.
Economic connectedness, the degree of friendship between low- and high-SES individuals, is the strongest social-capital predictor of upward income mobility.
Cross-class connectedness predicts mobility far better than cohesion or civic-engagement measures.

Subjects & keywords

Economics social capital economic mobility social networks economic connectedness facebook data

Cite this paper

APA

Raj Chetty, Matthew O. Jackson, Theresa Kuchler, & Johannes Stroebel [Large collaboration with 21 listed authors. Additional authors include Nathaniel Hendren, Robert B. Fluegge, Sara Gong, Federico Gonzalez, Armelle Grondin, Matthew Jacob, Drew Johnston, Martin Koenen, Eduardo Laguna-Muggenburg, Florian Mudekereza, Tom Rutter, Nicolaj Thor, Wilbur Townsend, Ruby Zhang, Michael (Mike) Bailey, Pablo Barberá, Monica Bhole, and Nils Wernerfelt.] (2022). Social Capital I: Measurement and Associations with Economic Mobility. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04996-4

BibTeX

@article{chetty2022social,
  author    = {Raj Chetty and Matthew O. Jackson and Theresa Kuchler and Johannes Stroebel and {Large collaboration with 21 listed authors. Additional authors include Nathaniel Hendren, Robert B. Fluegge, Sara Gong, Federico Gonzalez, Armelle Grondin, Matthew Jacob, Drew Johnston, Martin Koenen, Eduardo Laguna-Muggenburg, Florian Mudekereza, Tom Rutter, Nicolaj Thor, Wilbur Townsend, Ruby Zhang, Michael (Mike) Bailey, Pablo Barberá, Monica Bhole, and Nils Wernerfelt.}},
  title     = {Social Capital I: Measurement and Associations with Economic Mobility},
  journal   = {Nature},
  year      = {2022},
  doi       = {10.1038/s41586-022-04996-4},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04996-4}
}

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