Social capital and its impact on the community.

Abstract

In this paper I examine the relationship between the community and an individual’s social capital. Operating from the assumption that social capital is beneficial to the community I build on this notion by discriminating between faith-based social capital and communal, trust-based social capital. I assert that the two types of social capital are associated and exclusive to with differing populations. In addition, I claim that faith-based social capital and trust-based social capital impact the community in different ways through the means of charitable giving and volunteering. Using the 2006 Faith Matters Survey and a combination of Ordinary Least Squares Regressions and Binary Logistic Regressions, I find that not only are the types of social capital specific to populations, but also that faith-based social capital has a larger impact on a respondent’s volunteering and charitable giving.