Ethnicity, community and social capital

This chapter focuses on indicators of social capital in the lives of the mothers of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) children. It explains that the concept of social capital has been influential in policy circles, but is contested, and has been used for varying purposes by social theorists. It notes that for Coleman, social capital refers to ‘the set of resources that inhere in family relations and in community social organisation and that are useful for the cognitive or social development of a child or young person’. It notes further that for Putnam, social capital describes ‘features of social organisation, such as trust, norms and networks’. It examines a number of indicators of social capital that were available in the MCS data at age 5.