Social capital is a key concept in the social sciences and – even though most people don’t use the term – also in common sense. Who you know matters in all sorts of ways. Such connections are associated with access to resources and opportunities of various kinds. Do governments do enough to influence this aspect of our lives and encourage net upward social mobility rather than perpetuating inherited wealth and status? A new British-American study suggests not, and makes some striking recommendations for change.
Using data from Facebook alongside public sources and a survey, the researchers – some of whom work for Facebook’s owner, Meta, and others for the UK government’s behavioural insights team (known as the “nudge unit”) – mapped friendships across the UK. Their finding is that children from poorer backgrounds who live in less economically segregated communities have higher incomes as adults. Those who grow up in the 10% least-connected local authority areas can expect to earn £5,100 less annually than those in the 10% most-connected ones. There are big regional variations, with more connectedness in big cities and the south-east, and much less in deprived parts of Wales and Northern Ireland.
Such findings are intuitive and unsurprising to anyone with progressive politics. A commitment to breaking down the rigid class distinctions and prejudices of the past, to distribute opportunities more evenly, is what lies behind the left’s traditional support for comprehensive education, the NHS and mixed communities in which people who own their homes live alongside less wealthy renters.
The intermingling that the sharing of neighbourhoods and institutions encourages brings benefits to everyone by promoting social cohesion and trust. Importantly, it protects vulnerable households from neglect and social exclusion due to the lack of transport links, leisure facilities and shops that can afflict poor areas. It is encouraging to learn that, despite the shameful levels of poverty and worsening social mobility of recent years, the poorest half of the UK population have about half (47%) of their friendships with the higher-income half (in the US the figure is 39%). Such ties can be seen as a form of resistance to the further entrenching of privilege.
Future research will probe the role of schools and health. This study notes that poorer people make more friends in their neighbourhoods, while richer ones make them at university. And it points to the “unique” role of universities in exposing young people to wealthier peers – highlighting the social-mobility function of higher education. More unexpected, perhaps, is a proposal for policies to promote hobbies and clubs, because the friendships made in these settings are especially likely to cross class boundaries.
Those at the top and bottom ends of the wealth scale have fewest friends from other groups – a finding that backs up existing knowledge about the socially corrosive effects of inequality. Opportunities to boost the social capital of those who need more of it must not be allowed to distract from their pressing needs for higher incomes and better housing.
There is an irony in having Meta as a partner in this research, given the weight of evidence that attention-greedy and underregulated social media businesses are themselves degrading social life in key respects, and fuelling social and political polarisation. All the same, this is a valuable study.
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