Characterizing social networks and their effects on income diversification in rural Kerala, India
研究了印度喀拉拉邦农村社会网络如何影响家庭收入多样化，发现社会联系能将教育等家庭特征的影响放大3.6倍，且社会分层越严重，收入多样化程度越低。
Income diversification continues to be a key strategy for poor rural households, including those that are progressively developing and those operating under increasing distress. The ability of a household to diversify has been shown to depend upon its demographic and economic characteristics and its physical and social context. This paper considers the effects of intra-village social networks on household income diversification in one of the poorest and most ethnically diverse areas of the Indian state of Kerala. Using techniques adapted from spatial econometrics, we find that social connections within a village magnify the impacts of household characteristics such as education and number of adults by a factor of 3.6 times. Models with alternative measures of network centrality (degree and eigenvector) indicate that the number of network connections that a household has is more important than the centrality of those connections. Finally, we use social contact information to calculate assortative mixing based on caste. The results suggest social stratification in these villages, with higher levels of stratification associated with lower levels of income diversification.