Rebuilding Local Social Capital Will Help Repair America's Divisions

Delivery from a food bank during the pandemic.

From combative school board meetings to people’s growing unwillingness to befriend neighbors with different political views, the signs are everywhere: The social fabric of America’s cities, towns, and neighborhoods is fraying. Rebuilding local “social capital” is a vital prerequisite to promoting opportunity, closing inequities, and shoring up the foundations of the country’s increasingly dysfunctional politics. 

A place with strong social capital is a place with a high degree of connectedness among people, where citizens are likely to engage in civic life, join associations, trust their neighbors, and sustain intact families.

A place with strong social capital is a place with a high degree of connectedness among people, where citizens are likely to engage in civic life, join associations, trust their neighbors, and sustain intact families. 

When the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville toured the young American republic in the 1830s, he rightly cited Americans’ tendency to form voluntary associations addressing local challenges as one of the nation’s greatest strengths. But social capital has been declining in U.S. communities since the 1960s, as social scientist Robert Putnam documents in his book Bowling Alone.

Support workers and volunteers play with a young girl at a shelter housing those displaced by Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

Benefits of strong social capital 

Drawing on a composite measure of local social capital developed by researchers at the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC), new George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative research points to how social capital influences economic opportunity and civic well-being in U.S. cities. 

Metropolitan areas that score high for social capital tend to have relatively high engagement in post-secondary education among young adults and above average education levels among adults overall. That includes in Black and Hispanic populations. 

They also have higher incomes than metros with weaker social capital. This relationship holds within every specific population we’ve studied – including people with a bachelor’s degree, people with lower education attainment levels, and Black, Hispanic, and foreign-born workers. 

Metro areas scoring high on the JEC index, moreover, have outperformed other metros in building new housing and containing affordability pressures over the last decade. 

And places with strong social capital outperform in promoting upward mobility for young people growing up there, as Harvard University economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues have shown. While places with high median income mostly offer better upward mobility than lower-income

income places, Bush Institute research confirms that social capital is a more powerful predictor of upward mobility than incomes. 

Strong social capital promotes prosperity and opportunity in several ways. It works partly by cultivating pro-opportunity norms like responsibility and perseverance among young people, according to the JEC’s research. Cities with strong social capital also have an edge in competing for talent.

Cities with strong social capital also have an edge in competing for talent.  

Metro areas scoring high on the JEC measure have disproportionately attracted net inbound migration from elsewhere in the United States since 2010. Remote working during the pandemic has accelerated this movement to places with strong social capital, reinforcing the economic advantages of these cities. 

In addition, trust and civic engagement among citizens undergird the capacity of social capital-rich cities to rally together around addressing challenges. People in high-social capital communities are more likely to identify with fellow residents who will benefit from collective solutions. 

This reality increases support for investments in public goods like education and quality-of-life amenities. People are also more likely to accept new housing development when they identify with and trust the newcomers who will be moving into their neighborhood. 

Bush Institute research sheds further light on the relationships among social capital, local government spending, and public goods provision. Public spending per capita in metro areas is positively associated with median incomes and population size. 

After controlling for these factors, however, high social capital scores predict lower spending per capita, based on new WalletHub rankings for “best-run cities.” This means that higher-than-average government spending isn’t how cities with strong social capital generally address common challenges. 

Rather, social capital-rich cities are successful at getting better results from each public dollar spent and tackling problems through non-government approaches. 

WalletHub bases its “best-run cities” rankings on composite scores for public service quality and rates local governments according to service quality per dollar of public spending. Social capital scores strongly predict high service quality as well as efficiency in delivering quality for each dollar of spending. Meanwhile, high public spending per resident predicts low service quality after controlling for social capital plus other demographic and income variables. 

This suggests two conclusions. First, high government spending per capita in a city may crowd out volunteer activities and non-government institutions of civil society, undermining collective efforts that would benefit from volunteer and nonprofit engagement. 

Second, strong social capital likely plays a vital role in making local governments responsive and accountable. One piece of evidence: The three most corrupt large U.S. cities, based on corruption rankings compiled by University of Illinois at Chicago researchers, are New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Those cities score high for public-sector spending but low for social capital and efficiency in converting dollars to quality services. 

It’s less clear how social capital in a locality affects people’s engagement in national politics. After all, a town characterized by either progressive or conservative monoculture may enjoy a high degree of social cohesion locally but contribute to tribalism and polarization at the national level. 

However, America’s cities and towns are growing ever more diverse. It may be that people are less likely to support extremist positions in federal and state politics if they are accustomed to viewing neighbors not as enemies to vanquish but as fellow citizens whose values and opinions deserve respect despite inevitable differences. States that score highest for social capital, mostly in the northern plains and mountain states, tend to be “purple” in recent elections, showing the way to a less poisonous style of politics. 

It may be that people are less likely to support extremist positions in federal and state politics if they are accustomed to viewing neighbors not as enemies to vanquish but as fellow citizens whose values and opinions deserve respect despite inevitable differences. 

Social capital is not evenly spread 

Why do some cities and neighborhoods so outperform others for social capital? It helps to be a high-income place. Wealthier people can better afford many of the activities that tend to promote social capital, like volunteering in local organizations. 

Most of America’s poorest places score low on the JEC index. Metro areas with relatively high Black and Hispanic population shares also tend to have lower social capital scores. They reflect America’s unfinished business of ensuring full participation in civic life for historically excluded groups and building trust across racial lines. 

But Bush Institute research points to numerous places that defy simple predictions. Some metros have much higher social capital scores than one would expect based on incomes and racial composition. These include heavily Hispanic low-income Texas border metros like El Paso, McAllen-Edinburg, and Laredo. They also include Southeastern metros with large Black populations, like Atlanta; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Charleston, South Carolina. Other metros score far below what the numbers would predict, like wealthy New York, San Francisco, and San Jose. 

Building strong local social capital in the context of diverse 21^st century cities requires bridging racial divides to a greater degree than most U.S. cities have accomplished to date. It also means building on successful social capital-generating institutions that have long operated within minority communities, like Black churches and informal mutual-aid networks among immigrants. 

Building strong local social capital in the context of diverse 21^st century cities requires bridging racial divides to a greater degree than most U.S. cities have accomplished to date.

Public policy also has a central role to play. One clear priority is for local governments to lower barriers impeding cooperation among the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. 

Timothy Carney of the American Enterprise Institute has documented the key role institutions of civil society play in building social capital in cities, towns, and neighborhoods. Bush Institute research also shows that strong anchor institutions in cities – particularly universities – are associated with high social capital scores. Another area of policy focus should be promoting homeownership, since neighborhoods with high homeownership rates tend to have better-than-average social capital. 

Finally, several authors point to the success of intentional efforts to promote social capital at hyperlocal scale. Writer Anne Snyder describes a handful of universities and neighborhood organizations that have produced startling results in her book The Fabric of Character, while the “Weave Project” launched by New York Times columnist David Brooks cites individuals who stand out as “weavers” of social fabric in their communities. 

Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, suggests that America may be approaching an era of renewed social capital building in his recent book The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. The early to mid-20^th century was a golden age of institution building, rising civic engagement, and effective public policymaking, Putnam shows. Even minority populations saw rapid improvement in economic mobility and well-being, despite the pervasive racial injustice of those times. 

Looking ahead, America needs to rediscover its longtime strengths in institution and community building. If we do, a new upswing in social capital will set the stage for wider opportunity and healthier civic life in decades to come.