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November 13, 2023
Family’s Place in America’s Social Fabric
The family is arguably the most basic building block of community life.[i] But even as Americans continue to say their own families are centrally important in their lives[ii], family life…
November 8, 2023
Measuring the Geography of Social Networks
Social interactions shape social and economic activity across a range of domains, from migration and trade flows to job search and investment behaviors. However, quantifying the effects of social interactions…
November 1, 2023
The Ultimate Social Capital: A Story to Save the Union
The American Republic is on the brink; a revived civic national story can help us all come together to pull ourselves back from the abyss That the bonds holding the…
August 2, 2023
Measuring Social Capital: Can We Tell If Some Places Are Richer in Social Capital Than Others?
The concept of social capital has been inconsistently defined and described.[1]That should not be surprising, given that social capital is intangible and not easily measured. (The same is true of…
July 17, 2023
What the Rise in Dog Attacks Signals About the State of America’s Social Capital
If you have ever had the unfortunate experience of being attacked or bitten by a dog, you’re not alone. The one time it happened to me was while walking at…
July 12, 2023
Local News and Social Capital
Joseph Schumpeter famously observed that capitalism unleashed “creative destruction.”[i] If that is so for American journalism, just such a wave has, without doubt, been destroying local newspapers. What’s not yet clear…
May 3, 2023
The Mainline Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Social Capitalism
Download the Dataset When Alexis de Tocqueville penned his seminal Democracy in America lauding the strength of American communities, institutions, and associations, he noted the unique status of religion. Religion,…
April 28, 2023
Social Capital: What Is It?
Words and phrases, as they say, can do a lot of work. Sometimes, evocative terms can be useful even if they paper over imprecise concepts or obscure definitional disagreement. But…
April 18, 2023
Introduction to The Social Breakdown
“Social capital” is an esoteric and often loosely defined concept, yet it captures a deep-seated intuition and shared sensibility among virtually all Americans: Our relationships have value, and what we…