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Long ties, disruptive life events, and economic prosperity

Social networks shape and reflect economic life. Prior studies have identified long ties, which connect people who lack mutual contacts, as a correlate of individuals’ success within firms and places’ economic prosperity. However, we lack population-scale evidence of the individual-level link betwee...

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Autores principales: Jahani, Eaman, Fraiberger, Samuel P., Bailey, Michael, Eckles, Dean
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10334764/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37410864
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2211062120
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author Jahani, Eaman
Fraiberger, Samuel P.
Bailey, Michael
Eckles, Dean
author_facet Jahani, Eaman
Fraiberger, Samuel P.
Bailey, Michael
Eckles, Dean
author_sort Jahani, Eaman
collection PubMed
description Social networks shape and reflect economic life. Prior studies have identified long ties, which connect people who lack mutual contacts, as a correlate of individuals’ success within firms and places’ economic prosperity. However, we lack population-scale evidence of the individual-level link between long ties and economic prosperity, and why some people have more long ties remains obscure. Here, using a social network constructed from interactions on Facebook, we establish a robust association between long ties and economic outcomes and study disruptive life events hypothesized to cause formation of long ties. Consistent with prior aggregated results, administrative units with a higher fraction of long ties tend to have higher-income and economic mobility. Individuals with more long ties live in higher-income places and have higher values of proxies for economic prosperity (e.g., using more Internet-connected devices and making more donations). Furthermore, having stronger long ties (i.e., with higher intensity of interaction) is associated with better outcomes, consistent with an advantage from the structural diversity constituted by long ties, rather than them being weak ties per se. We then study the role of disruptive life events in the formation of long ties. Individuals who have migrated between US states, have transferred between high schools, or have attended college out-of-state have a higher fraction of long ties among their contacts many years after the event. Overall, these results suggest that long ties are robustly associated with economic prosperity and highlight roles for important life experiences in developing and maintaining long ties.
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spelling pubmed-103347642023-07-12 Long ties, disruptive life events, and economic prosperity Jahani, Eaman Fraiberger, Samuel P. Bailey, Michael Eckles, Dean Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Social Sciences Social networks shape and reflect economic life. Prior studies have identified long ties, which connect people who lack mutual contacts, as a correlate of individuals’ success within firms and places’ economic prosperity. However, we lack population-scale evidence of the individual-level link between long ties and economic prosperity, and why some people have more long ties remains obscure. Here, using a social network constructed from interactions on Facebook, we establish a robust association between long ties and economic outcomes and study disruptive life events hypothesized to cause formation of long ties. Consistent with prior aggregated results, administrative units with a higher fraction of long ties tend to have higher-income and economic mobility. Individuals with more long ties live in higher-income places and have higher values of proxies for economic prosperity (e.g., using more Internet-connected devices and making more donations). Furthermore, having stronger long ties (i.e., with higher intensity of interaction) is associated with better outcomes, consistent with an advantage from the structural diversity constituted by long ties, rather than them being weak ties per se. We then study the role of disruptive life events in the formation of long ties. Individuals who have migrated between US states, have transferred between high schools, or have attended college out-of-state have a higher fraction of long ties among their contacts many years after the event. Overall, these results suggest that long ties are robustly associated with economic prosperity and highlight roles for important life experiences in developing and maintaining long ties. National Academy of Sciences 2023-07-06 2023-07-11 /pmc/articles/PMC10334764/ /pubmed/37410864 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2211062120 Text en Copyright © 2023 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Social Sciences
Jahani, Eaman
Fraiberger, Samuel P.
Bailey, Michael
Eckles, Dean
Long ties, disruptive life events, and economic prosperity
title Long ties, disruptive life events, and economic prosperity
title_full Long ties, disruptive life events, and economic prosperity
title_fullStr Long ties, disruptive life events, and economic prosperity
title_full_unstemmed Long ties, disruptive life events, and economic prosperity
title_short Long ties, disruptive life events, and economic prosperity
title_sort long ties, disruptive life events, and economic prosperity
topic Social Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10334764/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37410864
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2211062120
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