This study explores the concept of social capital, emphasizing its three dimensions—bonding, bridging, and linking—and their collective impact on social cohesion and development. Utilizing data from the World Values Survey (2010–2014), a comprehensive Social Capital Index (SCI) is constructed for 43 nations. The methodology involves data normalization, principal component analysis, and aggregation of sub-indicators across social dimensions. Findings reveal significant variations in SCI across countries, influenced by cultural, institutional, and socio-economic factors. Bonding social capital, characterized by trust and solidarity within close-knit groups, is notably strong in countries like Singapore, Georgia, and India, reflecting cultural emphasis on family and intergenerational relationships. These nations exhibit high levels of familial trust, shared values, and reciprocity. However, countries like Peru and Romania rank low, suggesting weaker familial bonds and less cohesive social structures. Bridging social capital, which measures connections between diverse groups, is highest in South Africa, Rwanda, and Nigeria due to strong civic engagement, tolerance, and inclusivity. India performs moderately in this dimension, while nations like China, Tunisia, and Japan lag, reflecting limited trust in diversity and lower organizational participation. Linking social capital, focused on trust in institutions and governance, highlights stark contrasts. Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines excel, owing to responsive governments and strong public trust. India also ranks high, reflecting significant confidence in institutions, while Yemen and Tunisia struggle with systemic distrust and political instability. The composite SCI ranks Singapore, Rwanda, and the Philippines as leaders, showcasing balanced performance across all dimensions. India, though ranked in the medium SCI category, demonstrates strong bonding and linking capital but requires improvement in bridging dimensions to enhance overall social cohesion. The findings underscore that while economic development influences social capital, it does not guarantee it. Policies fostering trust, inclusivity, and institutional transparency are vital for strengthening social capital and driving sustainable societal and economic progress.

Individual social capital denotes embedded resources in personal social networks. Resource generators are one of the three representative measurements of individual social capital, along with name and position generators (Van Der Gaag and Snijders 2005). Resource generators probe if one has any social ties that can provide necessary assistance for various needs such as job-search or legal information, provision of helping hands for household chores when sick, lending money, listening ear, or caring about one’s well-being. Whether and how resource-generator social capital is associated with life satisfaction and depression in young adults is not well documented in the literature. The present study used a two-wave longitudinal data set from the Seoul Young Adults Panel Study (SYPS) surveys administered in 2021 and 2022 on the respondents aged between 18 and 35 at the first wave. The retention rate between the two waves was 72.4%, and the final sample size was 3,762. The study used the fixed-effects regression model to estimate within-person changes over time conservatively. The multivariable regression results found that resource-generator social capital was positively associated with general life satisfaction. Further, resource-generator social capital was significantly related to thirteen domain-specific life satisfaction such as quality of life, health, achievement, safety, prospects for the future, work, or communal environment. On the contrary, resource-generator social capital was negatively associated with the number of depressive symptoms. In conclusion, the presence of social ties that may provide expressive and instrumental resources increases general and specific life satisfaction and decreases depressive symptoms in young adults.

Social capital is one of the most fertile concepts for the last decades. In India, a growing literature seeks to demonstrate the function of caste as social capital. This assertion is based on an extensive definition of social capital as networks and cultural norms that will foster trust and social cohesion. This article takes root in a more restrictive meaning of social capital i.e. interpersonal relationships and the different kinds of resources embedded in these relationships. While taking another definition, this article takes up the same research question. To what extent would caste be a determinant of interpersonal relationships in villages of South India? In a context of rising inequalities all over India, to what extent social capital endowments differ between caste groups? These questions are explored through quantitative data drawn from network modules of the NEEMSIS-1(2016-17) and NEEMSIS-2 (2020-21) surveys collected over 600 households in Tamil Nadu. It includes both name and position generators. Our database includes 11 142 links Alter-Ego in different contexts based on an egocentric approach. The determinants of sociability are analysed through factorial analyses and social networks analysis. Sociability is mainly driven by caste and village relationships with outstanding degrees of homophily and homogeneity. Villages are strongly segregated both spatially and socially. The question of social capital is however hardly solved colliding with challenges of measurements and comparability. Overall, this article is one of the first to use social networks data in India while such data are still lacking for developing countries.

Research and national census data suggest that Indigenous Peoples in Australia, Canada, U.S., and New Zealand (CANZUS) are socially mobile, with increases in post-secondary attainment and income, entry into middle class professions, and rates of entrepreneurship. A reoccurring and persistent theory centres on the negative impact of social mobility to Indigenous identity – with increases in income, education and professionalization, there are decreases in the cultural legitimacy of Indigenous people – perpetuating the idea of an erosion of Indigenous cultures and social networks at the hands of increasing prosperity. Further, capitalist ideals of success aspired to by Indigenous people are often portrayed as culturally selling out. While these ideas are popularly maintained, longitudinal work does not exist that looks at Indigenous experiences of social mobility, increasing prosperity, and its outcomes. Are Indigenous people, in fact, “wealthing out” of their ties to Indigenous social and cultural capital? Extending work from a multi-year, cross-national study of Indigenous entrepreneurs, this paper will present findings from second-wave interviews, alongside a large survey of Indigenous entrepreneurs and professionals in Queensland, Australia – the first study of its kind that takes a longitudinal look at Indigenous social mobility, and its impact on social and cultural capital. This paper also contributes to the broader literature by integrating Indigenous definitions of wealth, and understandings of forms of capital.

This contribution studies how life course events influence changes in social capital. The central hypothesis is that some events will provide an opportunity to enlarge social capital, while others diminish resources. National representative network panel data that span 19 years (1999-2018) are employed to examine such patterns of social capital changes. Social capital is assessed by the position generator instrument. Findings show that many life course events such as union formation enlarge a person’s social capital. This is associated, however, with an increase in social fragmentation and segregation, since social capital in the network is increasing at the cost of social capital range and diversity. In general, life events offer opportunities to increase social capital for people in less fortunate social positions, rather than for those whose position is already at the higher end of the social strata.

Existing research on the class divide in political attitudes has largely focused on individual class positions, with limited attention given to the role of class-based personal networks. To address this gap, this paper examines the relationship between individual class positions, the class composition of personal networks, and political attitudes toward both socioeconomic and sociocultural issues. I propose two main hypotheses regarding the role of personal networks in shaping political attitudes. First, personal networks may influence political attitudes independently of an individual’s class position. Second, the influence of personal networks on political attitudes may vary depending on an individual’s class position. This study utilizes quantitative data from three waves (2016–2023) of the Chilean Longitudinal Social Survey (ELSOC), a representative panel survey of the urban Chilean population. Explanatory analyses using multivariate regression models reveal that variations in political attitudes are significantly shaped by network composition. Specifically, individuals with heterogeneous networks tend to display more progressive and egalitarian views, while network segregation leads to notable attitudinal differences, particularly across different classes. These findings highlight the critical role of personal networks in understanding how class influences political attitudes.

Over time, the notion of social exclusion has evolved to encompass vulnerability in the sense of exposure to economic insecurity and risk. This is particularly relevant amidst the progressive erosion of the secure, stable career patterns that used to be based on permanent salaried employment, especially in Europe. The recent rise of digital platform work has intensified precarity and poverty risks, reconfiguring inequalities in ways that remain only partially understood.

The proposed presentation operationalises the concept of individual economic vulnerability seen as heightened risk of multidimensional deprivation. We build a composite indicator that incorporates economic-financial and familial factors, along with human capital (education and skills) and social capital (resources embedded within personal networks), both essential for labour market success. Social capital is particularly important as a buffer against precarity, though its distribution may be uneven and contingent on contextual factors.

We harness original data from a survey of online platform workers in France (n = 908, 2018) and Spain (n = 447, 2020-22), using a position generator to measure social capital. Results show that most workers display signs of exposure to economic risk, with distinct sub-groups combining multiple sources of vulnerability. Notably, groups already marginalized by their gender, age, or migration history exhibit the lowest social capital and highest vulnerability. We conclude that non-standard, technology-enabled job arrangements reproduce inherited patterns of inequality and deprivation.

We present new data collected from over forty rural communities around the world to analyse the relationship between material wealth, inequality in wealth, and a variety of social support networks that connect “sharing units” (households) together. These data were gathered as part of the “ENDOW” project (for Economic Networks and the Dynamics Of Wealth inequality, a large US NSF-funded collaboration). The ENDOW communities show immense diversity in their institutional, cultural, and economic arrangements, ranging from farming villages in India to fishing settlements in Ecuador to pastoral groups in Namibia. Anthropologists working with each community have gathered extensive demographic, economic, and social support network data that form the basis of our analyses.

Looking within communities, we find consistent positive associations between sharing unit wealth and both access to support (out-degree) and provisioning of support (in-degree) within the community, and more mixed associations with access to support beyond the community. We also find a form of wealth homophily in that sharing units that have a greater fraction of their connections to wealthy sharing units are significantly wealthier themselves (economic connectedness, Chetty et al 2022). Across communities, we examine how network features predict which sites have greater material wealth inequality. We find that communities that have less economic connectedness (links across wealth levels) have significantly greater wealth inequality. In contrast, we do not find a correlation between the variance in sharing units’ access to or provisioning of support and its material wealth inequality. We discuss the implications of these findings and plans for further explorations.

Social capital theories highlight the importance of social relationships for health outcomes and life opportunities. However, research often relies on aggregate measures, neglecting how specific tie and network characteristics facilitate resource flow, such as social support. Moreover, discussions on the bonding and bridging function of ties primarily focus on how actors bridge different social groups, disregarding place and space. Especially for young adults in deprived areas, outreaching bridging ties can be crucial, as local ties may only offer limited informational or instrumental support. In this study, we analyse how social capital, manifested in ties that are embedded in residential areas and personal networks, is associated with the flow of resources—specifically, the provision of different types of social support to young adults in Switzerland. Using cross-classified multilevel models, we analyse data from the Swiss Federal Survey of Young Adults (CHX-YASS; n = 79,000). Our findings show that some network measures of social capital remain associated with received support after accounting for tie and individual-level covariates. At the individual level, social support depends on demand for receivers and available resources for providers, though this varies across support types. Spatial bridging social capital is associated with more advice and encouragement but not with more emotional support. This study contributes to the literature on social capital and social support by illuminating both social and spatial functions of social capital. The combined consideration of network and residential characteristics enriches our understanding of the interplay of contextual factors in the provision of social support.

Introduction and Aim:

Volunteering is a form of social capital that fosters trust and reciprocity within communities. However, measures of volunteerism often assume uniform experiences across racial groups, overlooking unique perspectives, particularly those of Black individuals. This study aims to quantitatively test for differential item functioning by race (DIF) in survey questions assessing volunteerism and qualitatively investigate reasons for finding DIF.

Methods:

We analyzed publicly available longitudinal data (1995–2016) from the Midlife in the United States Study (MIDUS) (n=6,695). Structural Equation Modeling and Item Response Theory analyses were used to detect DIF by race. Additionally, after identifying DIF items, we performed qualitative interviews (n=47) to explore explanations for DIF.

Results:

Findings revealed racial differences in volunteerism patterns. Black individuals were more likely to volunteer in social organizations (P(χ²,2) = 0.00), while White respondents were more engaged in youth-related work. Several survey items showed DIF by race, particularly “volunteering at schools or other youth-related work” and “volunteering for other relevant organizations or causes.” Qualitative findings reinforced these results, highlighting that Black participants were more often employed by community organizations, reflecting structural and cultural differences in volunteer engagement.

Conclusion:

Our findings emphasize the need for intervention planners and policymakers to account for racial variations in volunteerism. Standard survey measures may inadequately capture these differences, leading to biased assessments of social capital. Future research should refine measurement tools for cultural relevance and examine how structural factors shape racial disparities in volunteer work.