Social Capital in Rural and Urban Communities

Conventional wisdom says that informal help networks are traditionally more common in rural communities than urban communities. This paper draws upon data from the 1988 wave of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to compare the prevalence, type, and extent of social support networks among families in these places. We find that families living in rural areas are 67 percent more likely to exchange with kin only than not to exchange at all, compared with families living in urban areas. Families living in rural areas are neither more nor less likely to give money to kin, but they are 89 percent more likely than families living in urban areas to receive money from kin, net of other factors. Consistent with a normative interpretation of exchange, however, young persons of rural origin are more likely than those of urban origin to give monetary assistance to others. Finally, no urban-rural differences in amounts exchanged (in dollars) are found among otherwise similar families. Many of the urban-rural differences in patterns of exchange are explained by different family characteristics; however, key urban-rural differences remain, probably reflecting differences in norms and the availability of institutional support services in different areas.

Dataset(s): Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID): U.S., 1988. Census: U.S., 1990.