Revealing Social Capital
New research reveals that friendships across socioeconomic lines have a powerful relationship with future earnings and social mobility.
The groundbreaking study funded by the Nuffield Foundation, analysed 6 billion friendships in the UK among adults aged 25-64. Using anonymised Facebook data, the research found that children who grow up in areas where people from different economic backgrounds become friends, earn around £5,000 more per year as adults.
Conducted by an international consortium that included Neighbourly Lab, BIT, Meta, Stripe Partners, RSA, Stanford, and Opportunity Insights, this research builds on a 2022 US study led by Harvard economist Raj Chetty.
Economic connectedness was the second most important factor in predicting upward mobility, after median income. Unlike in the US, friendships in the UK are less divided by class, but former industrial areas have fewer cross-class connections.
These early findings can be used to inform policies and programmes aimed at increasing social mobility, with hobby groups, sports teams and attending higher education all providing particularly effective routes to encouraging friendships across income groups.
Click here to read the executive summary of early findings from the Revealing Social Capital research to gain insights into the importance of social capital and the potential for improved social connectedness and social mobility in the UK.
Stay tuned for Neighbourly Lab’s upcoming insights, where we’ll share key research findings and our role within the project.