Inequality and individuals’ social networks: the other face of social capital
研究了社会资本作为特权维护工具的另一面，发现西班牙社会中经济与人力资本高的人拥有更好的社交网络资源，社会资本的不平等加剧了经济不平等。
Abstract Social capital is a controversial concept, which is used in economics as a generic form of pro-sociality and a simple means to introduce the social context into mainstream approaches. However, the accepted view underestimates social conflict and does not properly characterise social capital as an asset. When considering these issues, a different face of social capital emerges, one that can be associated with closure and privilege maintenance. This paper studies how access to and the extraction of social network resources depend on the social structure. By analysing data from a survey that included a position and a resource generator, we find that for the case of Spanish society, people endowed with high levels of economic and human capital enjoy improved accessibility and networks with a high prevalence of instrumental relations. There is essential inequality in the endowment of social capital, which augments economic inequality. When inequality is socially embedded, traditional redistributive policies may have limited effectiveness.