The Role of Social Capital in Combating Poverty

Abstract

As the third in a series of books about building assets in poor communities, thisvolume examines the contributions that social capital can make to combatingpoverty and fostering the development of poor communities. Social capital refers to the set of resources that inhere in relationships of trust and cooperation between people.1 These kinds of social assets do not alleviate poverty directly; rather, they leverage investments in human capital and household financial resources. Poor people rely on the support of extended family relationships and of more formal orga-nizations like churches to survive. Scholars have long recognized the importance of these community support structures, and in that sense, social capital is not an entirely new notion for understanding the dynamics of poor communities. But recent schol-arly work on social capital has served to renew interest in how social organization and norms of cooperation, both within a community and in its relationships to out-side institutions, affect its development. In particular, this work has stimulated new thinking about the role that social capital can play not just in helping families survive but in advancing public policy that seeks to combat poverty. Making use of social capital as an analytical construct requires a shift from the individual to the community as the unit of analysis for strategies to combat poverty.