Empirical Applications of Social Capital to Growth, Poverty Alleviation, and Rural Development

Just as the theoretical and conceptual literature on social capital is vast, so too is the empirical literature now. This chapter limits the review by first focusing on broad applications relating social capital to economic growth and poverty alleviation, following which there is the more specific focus on rural development. Attempts to make the concept of social capital operational for empirical work have been criticized, as have the empirical findings reviewed below.1 Most of them have utilized different conceptual frameworks and defined social capital in different ways, but the commonalities are evident. The selection below is not exhaustive.