Reconsidering social capital: a latent class approach

Social capital has proven to be a useful concept, but has not been well-measured in the economics literature. We motivate and demonstrate the application of latent class models to measure social capital, based on the idea that social capital is an unobservable multidimensional construct. We explain and show the construction of latent classes that measure an individual’s social capital using data from the General Social Survey. Our method generates meaningfully different conclusions about the accumulation of social capital than those obtained by previous research. We present evidence that higher income influences social capital accumulation because of a higher opportunity cost of time. We also find evidence of complementarities in social capital accumulation within an individual’s peer group. Finally, we show that community heterogeneity influences the likelihood that individuals adhere to certain social norms independent of their propensity to participate in voluntary organizations.

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