2022.08.11跨越阶级的友谊可能促进社会流动并减少贫困

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Graphic detail | It pays to be friends
Friendship across class lines may boost social mobility and decrease poverty
An enormous new study vindicates “Bowling Alone”
Aug 11th 2022

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Published in 2000, “Bowling Alone” transfixed observers on American culture in a way that few books ever do. In it, Robert Putnam, a political scientist, argued that the steady erosion in social capital—interactions between people who are not family, close friends or colleagues—was ailing America. In the intervening decades, that theory has proved contentious. But new studies strike a blow in its favour.

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A large research team—including Raj Chetty of Harvard University, Matthew Jackson of Stanford University, and Theresa Kuchler and Johannes Stroebel of New York University—worked with proprietary data from Facebook on 72.2m young American adults. The shape of every person’s network of friends could be converted into empirical scores of social capital in a much finer-grained way than previously possible. And neighbourhood-level measures of social capital could be compared with desirable outcomes.


Most classical measures of social capital, such as civic engagement and intra-class bonding, were not correlated with improved life outcomes, the researchers found. However, one measure looked especially important. “Economic connectedness”—the extent of friendships across social classes—was strongly associated with increased rates of high-school completion, reduced rates of teenage pregnancy and increased income for those born poorer. Moving from a place where friendships across social strata are relatively uncommon (a one-in-four chance of a friendship between someone in the top and bottom halves of the class distribution) to one where it was relatively standard (a one-in-two chance) translated into an 8.2 percentile increase in future earnings.

The researchers then separated economic connectedness into two components: the share of wealthier people in a setting (exposure) and the rate at which wealthier and poorer people befriend each other (friending bias). Churches seem a more egalitarian setting than colleges. In universities, cross-class friendships form at a rate 5% lower than would be expected. In religious settings, friendships formed at a rate 3% higher than expected.


Although it uses big data, the study’s findings are largely based on correlations. (It remains hard to experimentally vary social capital.) But the imperative for integration seems stronger still. ■

Sources: “Social capital I: measurement and associations with economic mobility” & “Social capital II: determinants of economic connectedness”, by R. Chetty et al., Nature, 2022



图文详解--做朋友有好处
跨越阶级的友谊可能促进社会流动并减少贫困
一项巨大的新研究证明了 "独自打保龄 "的正确性
2022年8月11日


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2000年出版的《独自打保龄》(Bowling Alone)以一种很少有书能做到的方式让美国文化观察家们为之着迷。在书中，政治学家罗伯特-普特南(Robert Putnam)认为，社会资本--非家人、亲密朋友或同事之间的互动--的持续侵蚀正在损害美国。在此后的几十年里，这一理论被证明是有争议的。但新的研究对其有利。

一个大型研究小组--包括哈佛大学的拉吉-切蒂、斯坦福大学的马修-杰克逊、纽约大学的特雷莎-库克勒和约翰内斯-斯特罗贝尔--利用Facebook关于7220万美国年轻成年人的专有数据进行研究。每个人的朋友网络的形状可以被转化为社会资本的经验分数，其精细程度远远超过以前。而邻里层面的社会资本衡量标准可以与理想的结果进行比较。

研究人员发现，大多数经典的社会资本衡量标准，如公民参与和阶级内部联系，都与生活结果的改善没有关联。然而，有一项措施看起来特别重要。"经济联系"--跨社会阶层的友谊程度--与高中毕业率的提高、少女怀孕率的降低和出生时较穷的人的收入增加密切相关。从一个跨社会阶层的友谊相对不常见的地方（阶级分布的上半部和下半部之间有四分之一的机会建立友谊）到一个相对标准的地方（二分之一的机会），转化为未来收入的8.2个百分点的增加。

研究人员随后将经济关联性分为两个部分：一个环境中较富裕的人的比例（曝光率）和较富裕和较贫穷的人互相结交的比率（交友偏差）。教会似乎是一个比大学更平等的环境。在大学里，跨阶级友谊的形成率比预期的要低5%。在宗教环境中，友谊的形成率比预期高3%。

虽然它使用了大数据，但该研究的发现主要是基于相关性。(仍然很难通过实验来改变社会资本。)但整合的必要性似乎仍然很强。■

资料来源：《社会资本I：测量和关联》。"社会资本I：测量和与经济流动性的关联 "和 "社会资本II：经济联系的决定因素"，由R. Chetty等人撰写，自然，2022年