The Concept and Current Status of Social Capital

Abstract

This article briefly discussed the concepts and measures of social capital and empirically analyzed the current status and profiles of social capital in Korea. Four forms of social capital ? generalized trust, institutional trust, network, and norms of reciprocity - were derived through prior research and empirical verification on the concepts and measures of social capital. Three different profiles of social capital were further identified based on empirical classification considering multiple forms of social capital simultaneously. A special attention has been paid to how the distributions of social capital across groups differ according to forms of social capital. Findings showed that social capital was unequally distributed across demographic and socioeconomic groups, and socioeconomically vulnerable groups tended to have low levels of social capital. Findings also confirmed that there were substantial differences in the distribution of social capital across forms of social capital. Several implications were further discussed to address social exclusion through strengthening social capital.