Thick and Thin Ties

• In Event: 084 - Section on Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Paper Session. Extreme Poverty

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of relationships in providing access to social support, contingent on the level of resources in a network. We gain comparative leverage by using the 2006 Portraits of American Life Study, a nationally representative longitudinal survey with oversamples of racial/ethnic minorities in the United States. The survey provides ego-centric network data on up to four people the respondent feels closest to, excluding those in the same household. Using hierarchical models, we analyze about 8,000 dyads nested in about 2,000 personal networks to test hypotheses on how close ties formed through kinship, work, and civic organizations differentially shape social support. We then look at how the effects of these ties on support vary across socioeconomic status. We find that specialized access to resources is more likely in high status networks dense with resources, while disadvantaged groups must activate any and all potentially supportive ties. Our findings demonstrate that the impact of various social relationships varies by resource availability in networks. Consequently, we label thin ties as those that provide access to specialized resources, and thick ties as those that provide access to a greater heterogeneity of resources.

Authors

• Marion Coddou, Stanford University

• Paolo Parigi, Stanford University