IBSS-L: The Effect of Social Networks on Inequality: A Longitudinal Cross-Cultural Investigation

这个跨学科的研究项目将考察人们在社交网络中的联系如何影响他们随着时间的推移是获得财富还是失去财富。该项目将检验这样的假设，即在社区范围内的社交网络中的有利地位使一些家庭能够比他们的同龄人更快地积累财富，并将探索这些新出现的差距的机制。该项目将提供关于收入不平等对个人福祉衡量标准的起源和影响的新见解，以及相对平等的社会在社区内财富分配方面表现出增加的各种机制的新见解。通过在广泛的网站上使用一致的方法进行研究，该项目将促进早期职业学者在数据获取和分析方面的教育、培训和指导。该项目将产生使用这种方法进行分析的新软件，供其他人通过开放源码平台使用。由于该项目将包括对影响网络结构的经济因素和政策决策可能如何影响长期财富分配的评估，项目结果可以帮助设计政策和干预措施，通过促进社区内的特定联系来减少不平等。为了评估社交网络内的联系如何随着时间的推移影响财富分配，调查人员将在全球25个地点收集数据。在研究开始和四年后，将收集关于谁与谁有联系以及他们的财富水平的数据。研究地点展示了地理和社会生态的多样性，研究人员将调查包括狩猎采集者、园艺家、牧民、受薪劳动者和集约化农场主在内的社区，以及与市场经济和国家政治制度的不同程度的参与。将分析有关网络、财富和家庭特征的数据，以确定网络是否以及如何在决定财富和不平等的结果方面发挥作用。调查人员还将检验讨价还价能力取决于社会关系的观点。该项目通过NSF跨学科行为和社会科学研究(IBSS)竞赛得到支持。

This interdisciplinary research project will examine how people's connections within social networks affect whether they gain or lose wealth over time. The project will test hypotheses that advantageous positions in community-wide social networks allow some households to aggregate wealth more quickly than their peers, and it will explore mechanisms for these emerging disparities. The project will provide new insights regarding the origins and effects of income inequality on measures of individual well-being as well as to the heterogeneous mechanisms through which relatively egalitarian societies exhibit increases in the distribution of wealth within communities. Through the conduct of research using consistent methods across a broad range of site, the project will facilitate the education, training, and mentoring of early-career scholars in data acquisition and analysis. The project will result in new software for analyses using this kind of approach that will be made available for use by others through an open-source platform. Because the project will include assessments of how economic factors and policy decisions that affect the structure of networks are likely to impact the long-run distribution of wealth, project findings can assist in the design of policies and interventions to reduce inequality by fostering particular ties within a community.To assess how connections within social networks affect wealth distributions over time, the investigators will collect data in 25 locations across the globe. The data will be collected regarding who is connected to whom and what their level of wealth is at the beginning of the study and four years later. The study sites exhibit geographic and socioecological diversity, and the researchers will examine communities that includes hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists, pastoralists, wage laborers, and intensive agriculturalists as well as varying degrees of involvement with market economies and national political systems. Data regarding network, wealth, and household characteristics will be analyzed to determine whether and how networks matter in determining outcomes of wealth and inequality. The investigators also will test the idea that bargaining power depends on social connections. This project is supported through the NSF Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (IBSS) competition.