ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to understand how and why economic inequality harms social capital in the United States. It explores theoretical distinctions between bridging and bonding social capital and explains why these distinctions are important in researching economic inequality. The chapter also provides an overview of the empirical research, which analyzes the specific types of social capital harmed most by economic inequality. It explains in detail how economic stratification affects social interaction. An evaluation of the literature suggests that inequality can harm trust between richer and poorer groups and weaken opportunities for meaningful cross-class interaction. The chapter discusses the preliminary empirical findings, which compare different mediators' abilities to explain the relationship between inequality and bridging social capital. These findings suggest that economic inequality dampens social capital by causing people to lose confidence in government, by contributing to higher rates of crime, by harming job opportunities, and by enhancing economic dissatisfaction and frustration resulting, in part, from relative deprivation.
