Measuring Aggregate Social Capital Using Census Response Rates

• Author: Benjamin J. Newman,David C. Martin
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X14536923
• Published date: 01 July 2015
• Date: 01 July 2015
• Subject Matter: Articles

American Politics Research

2015, Vol. 43(4) 625 –642

© The Author(s) 2014

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X14536923

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Article

Measuring Aggregate

Social Capital Using

Census Response Rates

David C. Martin1 and Benjamin J. Newman2

Abstract

Despite the importance of social capital to political science research,

conventional means of measuring it are subject to a range of problems,

including nonresponse bias, declining validity over time, and/or a lack of

conceptual coherence. We argue that, in the case of the United States, rates

of response to the decennial census represent a powerful yet overlooked

measure for aggregate social capital. In this research note, we elaborate a

theoretical rationale for the measure and empirically validate it, showing

across multiple data sets and levels of geographic aggregation that census

response rates (CRR) strongly predict various dimensions of social capital.

Our findings highlight an important opportunity for social capital scholars to

use existing governmental data to better measure geospatial variation in a

key social science construct.

Keywords

social capital, measurement, census response rate, survey response

In this special edition research note, we explore the use of census response

rate (CRR) data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau as a measure of aggre-

gate social capital. We select this topic because the rate of response to the

1Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA

2University of Connecticut, Stamford, USA

Corresponding Author:

Benjamin J. Newman, University of Connecticut, One University Place, Stamford, CT 06901,

USA.

Email: benj.newman@uconn.edu

536923APRXXX10.1177/1532673X14536923American Politics ResearchMartin and Newman

research-article2014

626 American Politics Research 43(4)

Census is currently understudied; yet, as our analysis will demonstrate, it is a

particularly powerful proxy measure of community norms of social trust and

reciprocity, as well as engagement in community social and organizational

life. Beyond the virtue of being readily available and free to use, census

response is a direct behavioral measure of these concepts, rather than a self-

reported measure subject to nonresponse bias, social desirability, or other

forms of bias. Likewise, use of this single measure is much more parsimoni-

ous in capturing aggregate levels of social capital than prior efforts that mea-

sure the phenomenon through multiple contextual indicators of known

relevance to trust (e.g., residential mobility rates, commuting times, educa-

tion levels, racial diversity, etc.). Furthermore, as CRR data are derived from

a census, there is no sampling error; this allows for precision at very low

levels of aggregation. For all of these reasons, we believe CRRs represent a

boon to scholars of social capital and merit closer attention.

In the following sections, we provide a brief theoretical foundation for the

correspondence between the phenomena of social trust and census response,

including a review of prior work employing the measure. Next, we elaborate

on the methodological virtues of this measure over others. We follow this

section with an analysis that proceeds in three parts. First, utilizing the 2000

Social Capital Benchmark Survey (SCBS) and the 2006 Social Capital

Community Survey (SCCS), we demonstrate that CRRs calculated at the

census tract level significantly predict tract-level estimates of social capital.

Second, we corroborate these results with the 1994-1995 Project on Human

Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) Community Survey,

where we demonstrate that CRRs calculated at the neighborhood level sig-

nificantly predict various measures of neighborhood social capital. Last, we

demonstrate that state-level estimates of CRR strongly correlate with estab-

lished measures of state-level social capital. We conclude by discussing pos-

sible applications for this measure across various areas of research in political

science.

Capturing Social Capital With Census Response

At its core, research on social capital is premised on the idea that healthy

democratic societies rest on a bedrock culture of civic and social engage-

ment. Putnam defines social capital in terms of a community’s interconnected

social networks, as well as community-wide norms of reciprocity and trust-

worthiness (Putnam, 1995). The more interconnected the community’s social

networks, the more its citizens are able to overcome problems of collective

action and effectively lobby government for their interests. Of the many con-

tributions offered by the social capital literature, one has been the