IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/kb7dy_v1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social Capital in the United Kingdom: Evidence from Six Billion Friendships

Author

Listed:
  • Harris, Tom

    (Harvard University)

  • Iyer, Shankar
  • Rutter, Tom
  • Chi, Guanghua
  • Johnston, Drew
  • Lam, Patrick
  • Makinson, Lucy
  • Silva, Antonio S.
  • Wessel, Martin
  • Liou, Mei-Chen

Abstract

Social capital is widely believed to impact a wide range of outcomes including subjective well-being, social mobility, and community health. We aggregate data on over 20 million Facebook users in the United Kingdom to construct several measures of social capital including cross-type connectedness, social network clustering, and civic engagement and volunteering. We find that social networks in the UK bridge class divides, with people below the median of the socioeconomic status distribution (low-SES people) having about half (47%) of their friendships with people above the median (high-SES people). Despite the presence of these cross-cutting friendships, we find evidence of homophily by class: high-SES people have a 28% higher share of high-SES friends. In part, this gap is due to the fact that high-SES individuals live in neighbourhoods, attend schools, and participate in groups that are wealthier on average. However, up to two thirds of the gap is due to the fact that high-SES people are more likely to befriend other high-SES peers, even within a given setting. Cross-class connections vary by region but are positively associated with upward income mobility: low-SES children who grew up in the top 10% most economically connected local authorities in England earn 38% more per year on average (£5,100) as adults relative to low-SES children in the bottom 10% local authorities. The relationship between upward mobility and connectedness is robust to controlling for other measures of social connection and neighbourhood measures of income, education, and health. We also connect measures of subjective well-being and related concepts with individual social capital measures. We find that individuals with more connections to high-SES people and more tightly-knit social networks report higher levels of happiness, trust, and lower feelings of isolation and social disconnection. We make our aggregated social capital metrics publicly available on the Humanitarian Data Exchange to support future research.

Suggested Citation

  • Harris, Tom & Iyer, Shankar & Rutter, Tom & Chi, Guanghua & Johnston, Drew & Lam, Patrick & Makinson, Lucy & Silva, Antonio S. & Wessel, Martin & Liou, Mei-Chen, 2025. "Social Capital in the United Kingdom: Evidence from Six Billion Friendships," SocArXiv kb7dy_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:kb7dy_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/kb7dy_v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/67dd9570efcb1d1f105227bb/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/kb7dy_v1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ed Diener & Shigehiro Oishi & Louis Tay, 2018. "Advances in subjective well-being research," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 2(4), pages 253-260, April.
    2. Esteban Moro & Dan Calacci & Xiaowen Dong & Alex Pentland, 2021. "Mobility patterns are associated with experienced income segregation in large US cities," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Foliano, Francesca & Tonei, Valentina & Sevilla, Almudena, 2024. "Social restrictions, leisure and well-being," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    2. Aline Lopes Moreira & Jorge Castellá Sarriera & Leonardo Fernandes Martins & Lívia Maria Bedin & Maria Angela Mattar Yunes & Luciana Cassarino Perez & Murilo Ricardo Zibetti, 2022. "Psychometric Properties of Children’s Subjective Well-Being Scales: a Multigroup Study Investigating School Type, Gender, Age and Region of Children in the South and Southeast Regions of Brazil," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 15(2), pages 657-679, April.
    3. Ihsana Sabriani Borualogo & Ferran Casas, 2023. "Bullying Victimisation and Children’s Subjective Well-being: A Comparative Study in Seven Asian Countries," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 16(1), pages 1-27, February.
    4. Aline Riboli Marasca & Maurício Scopel Hoffmann & Anelise Reis Gaya & Denise Ruschel Bandeira, 2021. "Subjective Well-Being and Psychopathology Symptoms: Mental Health Profiles and their Relations with Academic Achievement in Brazilian Children," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 14(3), pages 1121-1137, June.
    5. Xavier Oriol & Rafael Miranda, 2024. "The Prospective Relationships between Dispositional Optimism and Subjective and Psychological Well-being in Children and Adolescents," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 19(1), pages 195-214, February.
    6. Federico Contu & Daniela Di Santo & Conrad Baldner & Antonio Pierro, 2023. "Examining the Interaction between Perceived Cultural Tightness and Prevention Regulatory Focus on Life Satisfaction in Italy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-10, January.
    7. Jaspe U Martínez-González & Alejandro P. Riascos & José L Mateos, 2024. "Pattern detection in the vehicular activity of bus rapid transit systems," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 19(10), pages 1-18, October.
    8. Fatima Wasif & Tara McAuley, 2024. "Exploring Close Relationships and Executive Functions as Unique and Joint Predictors of Adolescent Subjective Well-Being Across the Transition to High School," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 25(6), pages 1-21, August.
    9. Patrizia Sulis & Paola Proietti, 2024. "Who can access what? Uncovering urban inequality in access to service for senior citizens," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 51(7), pages 1650-1665, September.
    10. Hao Liu & Ying Chen & Lin Ma, 2023. "Is Urban Renewal with Campaign-Style Governance Characteristics Satisfying in China?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 170(2), pages 561-579, November.
    11. Mamatzakis, Emmanuel C. & Tsionas, Mike G., 2021. "Making inference of British household's happiness efficiency: A Bayesian latent model," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 294(1), pages 312-326.
    12. Ekaterina Oparina & Sorawoot Srisuma, 2022. "Analyzing Subjective Well-Being Data with Misclassification," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(2), pages 730-743, April.
    13. Xiangdan Piao & Xinxin Ma & Tetsuya Tsurumi & Shunsuke Managi, 2022. "Social Capital, Negative Event, Life Satisfaction and Sustainable Community: Evidence from 37 Countries," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 17(3), pages 1311-1330, June.
    14. Bernardo García Bulle Bueno & Abigail L. Horn & Brooke M. Bell & Mohsen Bahrami & Burçin Bozkaya & Alex Pentland & Kayla Haye & Esteban Moro, 2024. "Effect of mobile food environments on fast food visits," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-11, December.
    15. Bernhard Schmitz & Christian L. Burk & Bettina S. Wiese, 2025. "Enhancing Life Satisfaction through Eudaimonic, Hedonic, and Combined Interventions: New Training Approaches Relevant to Theory and Practice," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 26(4), pages 1-25, April.
    16. Daniela Raccanello & Giada Vicentini & Elena Trifiletti & Roberto Burro, 2020. "A Rasch Analysis of the School-Related Well-Being (SRW) Scale: Measuring Well-Being in the Transition from Primary to Secondary School," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(1), pages 1-17, December.
    17. Nona C. Kiknadze & Blaine J. Fowers, 2023. "Cultural Variation in Flourishing," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 24(7), pages 2223-2244, October.
    18. Larry Dwyer, 2023. "Why tourism economists should treat resident well-being more seriously," Tourism Economics, , vol. 29(8), pages 1975-1994, December.
    19. Du, Yao & Sun, Guibo & Heinen, Eva, 2024. "Does subjective wellbeing modify travel behaviour changes among older people in response to a new metro line?," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    20. Junhua Chen & Na Liu & Shufan Ma, 2025. "How Does Relative Consumption Deprivation Influence Subjective Well-Being? The Moderating Role of Housing Wealth," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 26(3), pages 1-31, March.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:kb7dy_v1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.