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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 linkage and imputation across several nationally representative datasets, we produce a comprehensive measure of social capital at the individual level. We validate our measure by…

May 4, 2023

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

On May 4, AEI’s Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility (COSM) hosted the launch of “The Social Breakdown,” a new research series dedicated to the study of social capital. Event Summary The morning began with a keynote address from the Hudson Institute’s William Schambra, who covered AEI’s long history of studying mediating structures and civil…

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 do together matters. Social capital derives from our participation in—and belonging to—society’s “middle layers.” These middle layers are the myriad institutions, associations, and communities between…