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Abstract Low levels of social interaction across class lines have generated widespread concern 1–4 and are associated with worse outcomes, such as lower rates of upward income mobility 4–7 . Here we analyse the determinants of cross-class interaction using data from Facebook, building on the analysis in our companion paper 7 . We show that about half of the social disconnection across socioeconomic lines—measured as the difference in the share of high-socioeconomic status (SES) friends between people with low and high SES—is explained by differences in exposure to people with high SES in groups such as schools and religious organizations. The other half is explained by friending bias—the tendency for people with low SES to befriend people with high SES at lower rates even conditional on exposure. Friending bias is shaped by the structure of the groups in which people interact. For example, friending bias is higher in larger and more diverse groups and lower in religious organizations than in schools and workplaces. Distinguishing exposure from friending bias is helpful for identifying interventions to increase cross-SES friendships (economic connectedness). Using fluctuations in the share of students with high SES across high school cohorts, we show that increases in high-SES exposure lead low-SES people to form more friendships with high-SES people in schools that exhibit low levels of friending bias. Thus, socioeconomic integration can increase economic connectedness in communities in which friending bias is low. By contrast, when friending bias is high, increasing cross-SES interactions among existing members may be necessary to increase economic connectedness. To support such efforts, we release privacy-protected statistics on economic connectedness, exposure and friending bias for each ZIP (postal) code, high school and college in the United States at https://www.socialcapital.org .
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Offer It and They Will Come? An Investigation of the Factors Associated With the Uptake of School-Sponsored Resources
In response to economic distress, schools are increasingly serving as providers and distributors of social service resources. However, even when schools offer resources that respond to needs, they struggle to attain high levels of uptake. We examine the family-level correlates of participation in school-sponsored resources during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic and find that uptake increases with economic need. In addition, net of need, families who report maintaining communication with parents of their children’s classmates take up more resources; and take-up of key meal and digital technology resources is associated with higher levels of take-up of other resources. These findings contribute to efforts to reposition schools as social service hubs by highlighting promising practices to improve resource uptake.
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- PAR ID:
- 10495501
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Educational Research Journal
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- American Educational Research Journal
- Volume:
- 61
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0002-8312
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 145 to 176
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312231209231
