Social capital—the strength of an individual’s social network and community—has been identified as a potential determinant of outcomes ranging from education to health. However, efforts to understand what types of social capital matter for these outcomes have been hindered by a lack of social network data. In joint work from Raj Chetty (Harvard University), Johannes Stroebel (NYU Stern), Theresa Kuchler (NYU), Matt Jackson (Stanford), and other collaborators, data on interpersonal connections is used to measure and analyze social capital for every ZIP code, high school, and college in the United States.

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