Communities, social capital and public policy: literature review
Policy Research Paper 26 / David Johnson, Bruce Headey and Ben Jensen. September 2005
This review explores the meaning and relevance of community and social capital drawing on a wide range of disciplines, in particular economics.
The review suggests four key principles for measuring community strength and social capital:
- distinguish between the structure (size, density) of community networks and their content (norms of trust, reciprocity and participation)
- specify precisely the geographical area and/or type of organisation to which measures apply
- develop measures of community/networks/social capital that can be validly presented at both individual and aggregate levels
- always asses the costs and benefits of social capital empirically and never assume that all social capital is benign.
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