Measuring Social Capital in Italy. An Exploratory Analysis

Fabio Sabatini

Development and Comp Systems from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to trace a map of Italian local social capital endowments. It focuses on the “structural” dimension of the concept, as identified with social networks. The analysis is based on a dataset collected by the author including about two hundred indicators of five main social capital dimensions: strong family ties, weak informal ties, voluntary organizations, civic awareness, and political participation. 51 key variables are selected for performing principal component analyses both on each of the five groups and on the entire dataset, in order to build latent indicators for every single social capital’s dimension and for the concept as a whole. Finally, a multiple factor analysis is run on the entire dataset, in search of a single synthetic measure of social capital. A clear distinction emerges between bonding social capital, shaped by strong family ties, and bridging and linking social capital, shaped by weak ties among friends, neighboors and members in voluntary organizations. Areas characterized by high levels of bonding social capital can suffer from a lack of bridging and linking ties. The study provides a valuable synthetic indicator capturing the particular configuration of social capital which the literature generally associates with positive economic outcomes.

Keywords: Social capital; Social networks; Economic development; Principal component analysis; Multiple factor analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 O10 O18 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2005-04-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-geo, nep-pol and nep-ure
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 45. Third Sector and Civil Economy Working Paper Series, No. 12 (April 2005), University of Bologna, Faculty of Economics.
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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