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October 11, 2024

It’s time to face up to our social poverty problem

…a check. Only by addressing the erosion of strong social ties can we help the disadvantaged flourish, rather than simply providing them an adequate standard of living. Scott Winship is…

August 29, 2024

The Distribution of Social Capital across Individuals and its Relationship to Income

Abstract There have been several attempts to measure social capital—the value inhering in relationships—at an aggregate level, but researchers lack comprehensive individual-level social capital measures. Using a combination of direct…

June 18, 2024

Economic Opportunity and Social Mobility

Years ago, I worked at the Pew Charitable Trusts on something called the Economic Mobility Project. In 2009, we commissioned a survey covering opportunity, mobility, and the American Dream. One…

May 6, 2024

How States and Communities Can Strengthen Marriages 

Family is the greatest source of social capital, providing the setting in which people grow, develop, and anchor their lives. Stable and healthy marriages are at the foundation of strong…

March 12, 2024

Family Dinners Offer a Silver Lining in a Bleak Social Capital Landscape

Across a variety of indicators, social capital in America is deteriorating. But one trend appears to be cutting across conventional wisdom—gathering the family around the dinner table. Dinners offer an…

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…

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…

May 4, 2023

The Social Breakdown: The Poverty of Family, Community, and Religious Life in America

…panels covering topics ranging from renewing trust in our shared institutions to reinvigorating religious life in America. The event concluded with remarks from Scott Winship, the director of COSM, who…

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…