Three simple models of social capital and economic growth

This paper proposes three models of social capital and growth that incorporate different perspectives on the concept of social capital and the empirical evidence gathered to date. In these models, social capital impacts growth by assisting in the accumulation of human capital, by affecting financial development through its effects on collective trust and social norms, and by facilitating networking between firms that result in the creation and diffusion of business and technological innovations. We solve for the optimal allocation of resources channelled into the building of social capital, examine the models’ comparative statics and dynamics, and demonstrate how a tax and subsidy scheme may correct the resource under-allocation that results from the public good aspect of social capital creation. Observed differences in social capital across countries are explained by differences in government policies and the possibility of multiple equilibria and social capital poverty traps.     

Family Capital: Implications for Interventions with Families

Social capital has been extensively discussed in the literature as building blocks that individuals and communities utilize to leverage system resources. Similarly, some families also create capital, which can enable members of the family, such as children, to successfully negotiate the outside world. Families in poverty confront serious challenges in developing positive family capital, because of lack of resources. For those families that are successful in developing positive family capital, family capital can help to create positive outcomes for family interactions. Thus, family capital can provide information about opportunities, exert influence on agents who make decisions involving the actor, provide social credentials that indicate a connection to a social network, and reinforce the actor's identity and recognition, which maintains access and entitlement to these social resources.     

Family as source,user, and builder of social capital

Purpose: For many years, family scholars have documented the significance of the family as a major institution for carrying out essential functions for individuals and societies: reproductive, physical sustenance, economic maintenance, socialization, nurturance, and meeting sexual and other social-emotional needs. The concept of social capital draws attention to the equally significant role of the family in building and supplying this component in the workings of the economy and society. Social capital provides a rubric for bringing together various ideas about the family that have been circulating for some time. A quarter of a century ago, the late Kenneth Boulding (1973) gave attention to the integrative function of the family, its role in supplying “the glue” that helps other parts of the social-economic system to hang and function together. More recently, Robert Bellah and his associates (1985) discussed the weakening of the moral or social ecology of a community—the web of moral understandings, relationships and commitments that tie people together—and how the family contributes to or, conversely, diminishes the social ecology. I consider social capital as a resource (i.e., matter, energy, or information converted into specific forms for attaining goals) embedded in relationships among people upon which they can draw to provide information or other resources or to facilitate activity of social or personal benefit. Family capital is a form of social capital for its members, as well as a contributor to the more general concept. I will emphasize positive forms or outcomes of social and family capital, realizing that harmful forms and outcomes also exist. I consider families to exist in a state of interdependence with community, societal and global socio-cultural, human-built, and physical-biological ecosystems.Methods: I will first focus on how the family through its nurturance, care-giving, and socialization function develops (or fails to develop) values, attitudes, expectations, and habitual patterns of behavior on which social capital and moral ecology depend. I will then discuss findings of research with families on small farms that illustrate the interdependence of family with other systems in its environment as source and user of social capital.Family as Builder and Source of Social Capital. Much has been written in recent years about the essential role of the family in building human capital, investing in the health, education, values and skills of it members to enable them to play productive roles in society. Human capital is essential for building economic, physical and social capital. I will not discuss this further, per se, but will concentrate on particular ways in which the family contributes to social capital.One of the most fundamental needs of human beings is development of the sense of trust—the belief that you can rely on and believe in others to do what is expected. Trust is the foundation of moral behavior on which social capital is built. The function of morality is to provide guidelines for social cooperation and coordination of activity in which humans can live together and interact with one another so as to avoid a situation in which “all are at war against all.” Building trust is part of the attachment process that begins in infancy as parents (or other primary caregivers) care for and meet the needs of young children for food, warmth, comfort, love, security, and human response. If these needs are not met in early life, a sense of mistrust develops; suspicion of others and failure to develop moral behavior or the ability to relate to and cooperate with others are likely results. In the world in which we live, we eventually learn that everyone cannot be trusted, but if a basic sense of trust has been established, betrayal and disappointment can be easier to deal with.Along with the sense of trust, family relationships and behavior help establish the principles of reciprocity and exchange—the notion that as you receive something from others, you are expected to give something in return. If you have given, you have a right to expect something in return. Reciprocity and exchange underlie creation and use of social capital. Boulding used the concept of grants that the family makes to its children or weaker members for material and emotional sustenance. Recipients of such grants do not provide “tit-for-tat” exchanges in return, but are sources of love and gratification to the giver. There is the assumption also, usually implicit, that children will provide care and help for parents in their older age. There is also the expectation that you should help other family members. Behavior in the family can also lead to generalized social reciprocity in which one gives to others without direct return from those to whom one has given, but gives because one has received benefits in the past.Research on social relations among older adults lends substantial support to operation of these principles in the family and in provision of continuity in human relationships through kinship structures. Virtually every study reports that most older adults are entrenched in a network of people who are very important to them—family and friend relationships that have existed for a long time. Parent–child and sibling relationships are especially important in providing economic aid, help with tasks, personal and health care, and companionship to older adults. Cross-generational help, such as provision of child care by grandparents, is also significant. Families, however, cannot meet all needs and must draw upon other systems. For example, friendship relationships are important in older life for many people, especially for leisure activities and intimacy, and have significant positive impact on well-being. Thus, while the family is a critical source of social capital, it must be seen as a system in a network of mutually interdependent systems. I hypothesize that learning how to participate in social groups and establish relationships is rooted in family behavior and in how open the boundaries are between the family and other groups in its ecosystem. Through its pattern of participation in other systems—religious, economic, civic, and the like—the family models behavior for future generations.Research with Families on Small Farms. Our research with families on small farms illustrates interactions with community systems for exchange of resources in using and creating social capital. We did intensive case studies over two-and-a-half years with three families who moved to farms at a field research station of Michigan State University as part of a research-demonstration program. In one facet of our research we obtained information about contacts the families made with systems in their environments through records and construction of ecomaps in which families identified various external systems with which they interacted and had exchanges. Systems were classified on a continuum of formality based on characteristics of structure and control with highly formal systems such as businesses, schools, and government agencies at one end and at the other informal relationships with relatives, friends, and neighbors. In between were semiformal systems with varying degrees of structure such as food and child care cooperatives, neighborhood and community clubs, and other interest groups. Some systems, such as local extension staff or clubs, were allied with formal systems but had more autonomy and flexibility. Exchanges were classified on the basis of the Foa and Foa (1974) framework in which it is proposed that six classes of resources account for the basic needs of human beings: money, goods, services, information, love/affection, and status. These are transmitted through interpersonal behavior interpreted as an exchange. Of particular significance for understanding social capital were findings related to informal and semiformal systems.Since the families had moved to a new community, many miles away from their extended families, establishing relationships with neighbors and making new friends became especially important as sources of friendship, status, information, and services. Locating or helping to create semiformal systems, including cooperatives and agricultural-interest groups such as sheep farmers or organic growers were also important, especially for getting and giving information about agricultural practices the families were trying out, such as organic farming for which, at that time, formal systems (e.g. the University) had little information to provide. Semiformal systems also provided friendship and status and served as places for barter, and sometimes sale, of goods and services. Systems of this nature play a unique role in what Flora and Flora (1993) propose as the kind of social infrastructure necessary for community development. By this is meant the “group level, interactive aspect of organizations or institutions” that can facilitate the flow of resources, particularly information. This type of infrastructure is essential for the development and flow of social capital. The family is an integral player in such an interdependent system for creating and using social capital.     

Children,adolescents and social work: A statement from the editor

Current social policy affects clinical social work with children, adolescents, and their families. As a result of inadequate funding, many resources that are needed for prevention and therapeutic work are not adequate for the needs of the client group. Gaps in resources affect the welfare of children and their families and often contribute to the causes of mental health problems. Other issues related to service systems and professional arrangements affect the identity and status of clinical social workers and interfere with optimal professional activities.     

Spatial effects on individual social capital: Differentiating the constraints of local occupational structures

Recent studies have paid more attention to how position-generated social capital varies by an individual’s characteristics, and less to how geographical distributions of occupations may constrain position-specific connections. By integrating two national surveys from the United States, we differentiate the extent to which individual social capital fluctuates by occupational compositions at the county, metropolis, and state levels. Multilevel analyses show that when more people at all three levels work in education, training, and library occupations, residents have a greater chance to gain access to professional-type resources. Similar spatial effects on farming and production resources, however, are more apparent at the county level. Not only does the association between individual social capital and local occupational structures vary across different occupations, but the magnitude of such spatial effects also differs by the scope of the geographical areas. The findings underscore how contextual factors and geographical location may contribute to building occupation-specific network resources.     

NEIGHBORHOOD DISADVANTAGE, SOCIAL CAPITAL, STREET CONTEXT, AND YOUTH VIOLENCE

This article integrates arguments from three perspectives on the relationship between communities and crime—constrained residential choices, social capital, and street context perspectives—to specify a conceptual model of community disadvantage and the violence of individual adolescents. Specifically, we propose that status characteristics (e.g., race, poverty, female headship) restrict the residential choices of families. Residence in extremely disadvantaged communities, in turn, increases the chances of violent behavior by youths by influencing the development and maintenance of community and family social capital, and by influencing the chances that youths are exposed to a criminogenic street context. We assess our conceptual model using community contextual and individual-level data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Our findings suggest that individual or family status characteristics influence violence largely because of the communities in which disadvantaged persons and families reside. Although we find that community social capital does not predict individual violence, both family social capital and measures of an alternative street milieu are strong predictors of individual violence. Moreover, our street context variables appear to be more important than the social capital variables in explaining how community disadvantage affects violence.     

Evolutionary Process of Social Capital Formation through Community Currency Organizations: The Japanese Case

Community currency systems are said to influence the revival of communities by promoting either local economic growth or social capital accumulation. However, no empirical studies have examined the multiple competing mechanisms for providing social support through transactional networks among participants. The current study connects network structural concepts to theories of social capital, transaction costs, homophily, and resource dependency at multiple levels and evaluates transactional relationships for community rebuilding and local economic development. We examine the evolutionary process of dynamic networks among local residents or organization members with network configurations in one of the largest Japanese community currency systems, “Peanuts.” Using longitudinal network data over 12 years for approximately 1400 actors, we conclude that the evolution and achievement of transactional network dynamics and partner selections differ between the two groups of participants: individual members and organization members. We also provide practical implications for sustaining participants’ transactions and commitment.     

Perceived Family Functioning and Family Resources of Hong Kong Families: Implications for Social Work Practice

This article reports the results of a telephone survey (n = 1,015 respondents) that aims to identify the perceived general family functioning and family resources of Hong Kong Chinese families and their linkage to each other in a rapidly transforming society. The perceived general family functioning of the respondents was average, and the five types of family resources—time, income, human capital, psychological capital, and social capital—of the respondents ranged from average to good. The following family resource domains, in descending order, have accounted for significant variance in perceived general family functioning: income, time spent with family, stress coping efficacy, religion, and satisfaction with the living environment. Our findings provide empirical support for policy formulation and social work practice.     

Neighborhood disadvantage, network social capital, and depressive symptoms

Research on why neighborhood disadvantage matters for health focuses on the capacity of neighborhoods to regulate residents' behavior through informal social control. The authors extend this research by conducting a multilevel analysis of data from a 1995 telephone survey of 497 residents of 32 neighborhoods in a U.S. city. The authors find that network social capital mediates the contextual effect of neighborhood disadvantage on depressive symptoms and that health effects of network social capital persist when perceived neighborhood disorder, a standard indicator of low informal social control, is controlled for. The findings demonstrate the value of a conceptualization and measurement of network social capital that (1) considers ties that transcend neighborhood boundaries, (2) investigates health benefits of network social capital in the forms of closure and embedded support resources and range and embedded instrumental resources, and (3) uses network data on specific network members with strong and weak ties to respondents.     

Social Capital Across the Life Course: Age and Gendered Patterns of Network Resources1

Despite increasing research interest in network dynamics and cumulative advantage/disadvantage processes, little remains known about how social capital varies across the life course. While some researchers suggest that social capital increases with age and others argue the opposite, this study tests these contradictory assertions by analyzing multiple indicators of social capital from a nationally representative data set on working‐age U.S. respondents. The findings reveal evidence of both social capital accumulation and decline. Social resources from occupational contacts tend to increase with age, but eventually level off among older respondents. Changes in voluntary memberships follow a similar pattern. However, daily social interaction is negatively associated with age. Overall, the results suggest that social capital embedded in occupational networks tends to accumulate across the career, even in the face of a general decline in sociability. The study also uncovers gender differences in these social capital trajectories that are linked to the distinct life experiences of men and women.     

Individuelle und kontextuelle Determinanten der Teilhabe an Sozialkapital

We ask for conditions influencing membership in social organizations as strongholds of social capital. Beside individual characteristics, contextual factors such as political, social, or economic settings are also taken into consideration to explain individual decisions to participate in social organizations. The influences of individual and contextual level factors are tested simultaneously in several multi-level analyses. The results show that membership in social associations on the one hand is affected by individual characteristics such as marked trust in others, high level of education, church attendance, strong ties with the neighbourhood, age and sex, and on the other hand by contextual factors such as a catholic social context and institutional settings. In particular, Swiss direct democracy offering larger possibilities of participation facilitates membership in social organizations.     

Family capital: Examining social capital,family commitment,and acculturation among college-enrolled Mexican-American men and women in the Southwestern United States

Social capital is integral to an individual’s ability to access various resources embedded in social and familial networks that are important in academic access and future success. The types and dynamics of social relationships created by men and women are thought to generate different forms of social capital with factors such as acculturation resulting in differences in intercultural networks and potential resource access. However, the factors that contribute to the development of social capital require further investigation. The current study examines the relationship between acculturation, family role commitment, and various social network characteristics associated with social capital among Mexican-American college-enrolled men (n = 119) and women (n = 196). Several multiple regressions were conducted. Findings indicate that acculturation and family role commitment relate differently to social-capital-network characteristics among Mexican-American men and women. For women, marital commitment was consistently related to social-capital-network characteristics whereas acculturation factors seemed to be more salient among men. Overall, study variables accounted for a larger portion of the variance for social-capital-network characteristics across analyses for men than women indicating that other factors may be at play in generating social capital for women.     

Mentors as Social Capital: Gender,Mentors, and Career Rewards in Law Practice*

Previous studies have demonstrated that mentoring provides numerous career benefits to individuals and organizations. This article advances past work by examining the effects of individuals’ primary and multiple developmental relationships in a longitudinal study of the careers of lawyers. We develop a social capital perspective on mentorship emphasizing reciprocity of exchange, resource mobilization, and normative expectations embedded within mentoring relationships. We empirically assess mentoring benefits across a diverse range of career rewards. The results provide evidence that male lawyers gain more from their mentor‐derived social capital than female lawyers. Specifically, male lawyers with mentors of senior status benefit with elevated earnings, greater perceived fairness in their workplace, and greater work satisfaction. Women with multiple mentors, however, report enhanced work satisfaction. Implications for research on mentoring, social capital, and professional careers are discussed.     

‘If I was a different ethnicity,would she treat me the same?’: Latino parents’ experiences obtaining autism services

This article reports on an ethnographic study with 12 Latino families of children on the autism spectrum related to obtaining autism services in Los Angeles County. Using critical discourse analysis of interviews, observations, and records, we consider the experiences of the Latino families in relation to: a discursively constructed ‘autism parent’ subject position that mandates ‘fighting’ service systems to ‘win’ autism services for children, originating from White middle-class parents’ socioeconomic resources and social capital; a neoliberal social services climate that assumes scarcity of available resources and prioritizes austerity in their authorization; and a media and institutional ‘cultural deficit’ discourse that attributes disparities in autism services for Latino children to their parents’ presumed culturally-based ‘passivity.’ We argue that parental discourse about fighting, or not fighting, for autism services is engendered by a tension between a parental logic of care, and the logic of competition of the economic market.     

The contextual effect of trust on perceived support: Evidence from Roma and non-Roma in East-Central Europe

In recent years, trust has been conceptualized as an important source of social capital, setting off cross-disciplinary research on both the benefits and predictors of trust at the individual and contextual level. In this paper, we turn to the individual outcomes of living in a trustful context, and explore the relationship between trust, itself one of the main components of social capital, and social support, seen as one of the most important effects of social capital. In particular, we ask how social capital—and the relationship between trust and social support—functions in the context of unequal societies. We model perceived support as an outcome across three levels, from no support to proximate to distal support, and using a cross-national study of Roma and non-Roma across 12 European countries, we track the relationship between trust and support across both mainstream and marginalized populations. Our findings suggest that living in contexts with more trust has protective effects particularly for members of marginalized groups: the Roma are more likely to have distal support in contexts with higher trust. We conclude that contextual trust helps to broaden the circle of support beyond family and friends; thus, trust can indeed be a synthetic force that binds individuals together in broadened structures of support.     

Capital and context: using social capital at home and at school to predict child social adjustment

Research examining the influence of social relationships on child outcomes has seldom examined how individuals derive social capital from more than one context and the extent to which they may benefit from the capital derived from each. We address this deficit through a study of child behavior problems. We hypothesize that children derive social capital from both their families and their schools and that capital from each context is influential in promoting social adjustment. Using a large national data set and structural equation modeling, we find that social capital at home and at school can be measured as separate constructs and that capital at home is more influential than is capital at school. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research on social capital and for practical interventions promoting social adjustment.     

Are we ready for them? Overseas-qualified social workers' professional cultural transition

Developing sociocultural competence in a new country is essential for migrants practising social work within new and distinct cultures. An argument for interventions needed to support the cultural transitioning of a migrant social work workforce is made, informed by findings from a mixed methods study of the experiences of overseas-qualified social workers in New Zealand. One of the main findings relates to migrant social workers' professional adaptation to the new environment. We focus the discussion here on how the perceptions and practices regarding the cultural dimensions of the transition informed their adaptation. Although this is a highly contextual example of social work practice in a foreign setting, the dynamics have equivalents in many international contexts as migration of labour is common globally. We argue that a greater focus on the migrant workforce is required in debates on globalisation. The discussion of the findings will highlight the need for culturally informed interventions to enable an increasingly global workforce to successfully make a professional cultural transition.     

Inequalities in social capital and their longitudinal effects on the labour market entry

This study investigates socio-economic and ethnic inequalities in social capital and their effects on the process of the labour market entry. We use longitudinal data about the transition from school to work of lower- and middle educated young people in Belgium. Social capital is measured with three robust position generator measures. In line with previous studies, there are substantial socioeconomic and ethnic inequalities in the access to social capital. Ethnic differences in social capital are, however, due to the socio-economic deprivation of ethnic minority groups in Belgium. Among the specific population of lower- and middle educated youth, knowing more people from the working class leads to a higher likelihood of entering the labour market versus continuing in education, whereas knowing more people from the higher service class results in a lower likelihood of entering the labour market. Especially the resources of strong ties such as relatives and friends are important for these decisions. In addition, once entered the labour market, social capital has an impact on the likelihood of getting a job. Lower- and middle educated labour market entrants who know more people from the working class are more likely to find work, whereas knowing people from the lower service class decreases the job chances. However, there is no evidence for social capital effects on the occupational status of the job among our population.     

Distinctions in the making: A theoretical discussion of youth and cultural capital

The aim of this paper is to address the dynamics of contemporary cultural capital by interrogating what counts for young people as valuable cultural resources. Considerable support is given in later scholarship for Bourdieu’s model of the social space, as the overall volume of economic and cultural capital combined is regularly found to be the most important axis of opposition, just as in Bourdieu’s work Distinction. Yet, while Bourdieu found the second axis to be structured by an opposition between those with cultural rather than economic capital, and vice versa, many later studies instead find oppositions between the young and the old to structure the second axis. Up till now, this finding has not been adequately addressed. In this paper, we hold that considering age-related inequalities offers a powerful way of interpreting recent developments in order to understand the changing stakes of cultural capital, and also their interaction with the intensification of inequalities in economic capital. After a theoretical clarification of the relationship between cultural capital and youth, we will synthesise research on young people and explore the significance of youthful cultural consumption. We will pragmatically focus on the 15–30 years old and put a particular accent on Norwegian studies in our review, as they are the most sophisticated in this genre. Four areas are explored: the restricted role of classical culture; the appeal of popular culture; digital distinctions, and moral-political positions as markers of distinction.