Social capital – the strength of our relationships and communities – has been shown to play an important role in outcomes ranging from income to health. This dataset provides a detailed analysis of social capital across various U.S. communities, focusing on its impact on economic mobility. Using privacy-protected data on 21 billion friendships from Facebook, we measure three types of social capital in each neighborhood, high school, and college in the United States:
Cohesiveness: the degree to which social networks are fragmented into cliques
Economic connectedness: the degree to which low-income and high-income people are friends with each other
Civic engagement: rates of volunteering and participation in community organizations
The dataset is approximately 8 MB in size and structured into different geographical levels, including ZIP codes, high schools, and colleges across the United States. Each entry details the three key measures of social capital—economic connectedness, cohesiveness, and civic engagement—allowing for targeted analysis at various community levels.
Publications Citing This Dataset:
Xi Wang, Tao Pei, Ci Song, Jie Chen, Hua Shu, Yaxi Liu, Sihui Guo and Xiao Chen. (2023). How does socioeconomic status influence social relations? A perspective from mobile phone data. Journal: Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications. V.615
DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2023.128612
Kokil Jaidka, Subhayan Mukerjee, Yphtach Lelkes, Silenced on social media: the gatekeeping functions of shadowbans in the American Twitterverse, Journal of Communication, 2023;, jqac050, https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqac050 Hirshleifer, David A. and Peng, Lin and Wang, Qiguang, News Diffusion in Social Networks and Stock Market Reactions (April 10, 2021).
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3824022 Chetty, R., Jackson, M.O., Kuchler, T. et al. Social capital II: determinants of economic connectedness. Nature 608, 122–134 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04997-3 David Obstfeld,Higher aims fulfilled: The social capital academy as a means for advancing underrepresented students in comprehensive university business schools,Business Horizons, 2022, ISSN 0007-6813
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2022.11.004 Chrislip, D.D., MacPhee, D. and Schmitt, P. (2023), "Developing a civic capacity index: measuring community capacity to respond to civic challenges", International Journal of Public Leadership, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 14-30.
https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPL-06-2022-0036 Jha J, Kelley EJ. Returns to Relationships: Social Capital and Household Welfare in India. Social Sciences. 2023; 12(3):184. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12030184 Bernhofer, J., Alexander Vincenzo, A. (2023). Financial Markets: Values, Dynamics, Problems. In: Cecconi, F. (eds) AI in the Financial Markets . Computational Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26518-1_3
