Social capital and financial access: evidence from a meta-analysis

This meta-analysis aggregates 538 estimates from 41 peer-reviewed studies to evaluate the relationship between social capital and access to finance. While the published literature disproportionately reports positive effects—suggesting moderate publication bias—we find that, once adjusting for both publication and methodological biases, the underlying effect of social capital is statistically weak and economically negligible. Our results also reveal substantial heterogeneity, driven by differences in measurement strategies, data characteristics, and regional contexts. These findings suggest that social capital, while often emphasized in the discourse on financial inclusion, may not play a systematically meaningful role in improving financial access. Instead, institutional, regulatory, or economic conditions may exert greater influence. By reconciling the gap between published findings and bias-adjusted estimates, our meta-analysis calls for a reassessment of prevailing assumptions and invites further research into alternative mechanisms that shape financial access.