Equality of opportunity and integration in social networks

Josue Ortega

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2019, vol. 530, issue C

Abstract: We propose the notion of k-integration as a measure of equality of opportunity in social networks. A social network is k-integrated if there is a path of length at most k between any two individuals, thus guaranteeing that everybody has the same network opportunities to find a job, a romantic partner, or valuable information. We compute the minimum number of bridges (i.e. edges between nodes belonging to different components) or central nodes (those which are endpoints to a bridge) required to ensure k-integration. The answer depends only linearly on the size of each component for k=2, and does not depend on the size of each component for k≥3. Our findings provide a simple and intuitive way to compare the equality of opportunity of real-life social networks.

Keywords: Social integration; Social networks; Equality of opportunity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437119309185
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:530:y:2019:i:c:s0378437119309185

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2019.121553

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().