Social Capital
Social capital is the web of relationships that give us a sense of connection, belonging, and community and helps people work together. The relationships that create social capital are based on mutual respect, trust, and reciprocity. Social capital includes both casual and close relationships and relationships among people who have much and little in common. Both individuals and communities have social capital.
Although we don't fully understand the connections between individual and community-wide social capital, we do know that each enhances the other. For instance, as we create trust in relationships with specific people, we come to trust all people more, and this social trust makes it easier to form new relationships. Likewise, when we are new in town, a community with high levels of social capital will offer us many opportunities to create new relationships.
The Benefits of Social Capital Are Both Individual and Community Wide
• Research has shown that increased social capital can help make our lives healthier, safer, richer, and makes us better able to govern a just and stable democracy.
• Joining one group cuts your odds of dying over the next year in half. Joining two groups cuts it in quarter.
• Communities with higher levels of social capital produce children with higher SAT scores and higher performance on a broad range of testing.
• These same communities also have lower dropout rates, higher retention, and less youth violence.
• The more connected we are within our community, the more likely we are to have reduced incidences of a whole battery of health problems including colds, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, depression, and premature death of all sorts.
• Higher social capital correlates strongly with reduced murders and violent crimes on a neighborhood basis.
• Representative government is more responsive in communities with more social capital.
• Blood donations more abundant, and road rage is rarer where citizens are more involved in civic life.
• Measured happiness goes up when we are socially connected in mutually respectful, trusting relationships based on mutual exchange or reciprocity
• Each 10 minutes of additional commuting time cuts all forms of social capital by 10 percent--10 percent less church-going, 10 percent fewer club meetings, 10 percent fewer evenings with friends, etc."
• TV is the only leisure activity where doing more of it is associated with lower social capital
• If you had to choose between 10% more cops on the beat or 10% more citizens knowing their neighbors' first names, the latter is a better crime prevention strategy. If you had to choose between 10% more teachers or 10% more parents being involved in their kids' education, the latter is a better route to educational achievement
• We're not experiencing a Springtime of volunteering, but an Indian Summer, propped up by our nation's seniors -- who have been more civic throughout their lives.
• We are bowling alone. More Americans are bowling than ever before, but they are not bowling in leagues.
• Social capital is the best variable to successfully predict levels of tax compliance state-by-state.
• The internet didn't cause our civic disengagement. We were well on our way to being civicly disengaged when Bill Gates was in grade school.
In short, just as there is clear value in physical capital and human capital, there is value to our communities in their social capital.
Social Capital Will Make Your Work Better Because
The more social capital you create as you go about your business -- whether your business is providing a social service, running a business, improving your community, protecting the environment- the easier and more effective your work will become. Building social capital by creating and expanding mutually respectful relationships based on trust and reciprocity will result in more volunteers, a greater ability to attract investment, fewer unproductive controversies, and stronger, more enduring results. In addition to making your own work easier and more effective, the social capital you help to create will benefit us all.