Reports and Issue Briefs
Long-Term Trends in Deaths of Despair
Anne Case and Angus Deaton famously chronicled a dramatic rise among middle-aged non-Hispanic whites since 1999 in “deaths of despair”—deaths by suicide, drug and alcohol poisoning, and alcoholic liver disease and cirrhosis. The Social Capital Project has extended Case and Deaton’s research to cover...
The Wealth of Relations: Expanding Opportunity by Strengthening Families, Communities, and Civil Society
For two years, the Social Capital Project has documented trends in associational life—what we do together—and its distribution across the country. With this evidentiary base established, the Project turns to the development of a policy agenda rooted in social capital. Specifically, the focus will be...
Losing Our Minds: Brain Drain across the United States
Over the past 50 years, the United States has experienced major shifts in geographic mobility patterns among its highly-educated citizens. Some states today are keeping and receiving a greater share of these adults than they used to, while many others are both hemorrhaging their homegrown talent and...
Chairman-designate Lee Responds to February Jobs Report
WASHINGTON – Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), Chairman-designate of the Joint Economic Committee, released the following statement in response to the release of February’s employment numbers
The Wealth of Strong Families, Communities, and Congregations: Utah as a Case Study in Social Capital
Last year, the Social Capital Project released its Social Capital Index, a tool that measures the health of associational life across the United States. As explained in our earlier report, What We Do Together: The State of Associational Life in America, we define associational life as the “web...
Is Marriage Still Popular?
Although family life in America has become less stable over the last several decades, the majority of the American population still agrees that marriage provides value to individuals and society. Yet based on results from the 2018 American Family Survey, marriage and parenting fall low on the list o...
Social Capital, Slavery, and the Long Reach of History
This week, marking Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Senator Mike Lee raised the question of whether a conservative populism could be racially unifying, rather than divisive. Senator Lee emphasized the importance of both advocating personal responsibility and acknowledging deep-seated barriers to opportun...
An Invisible Tsunami: ‘Aging Alone’ and Its Effect on Older Americans, Families, and Taxpayers
Social capital may be most valuable when an individual’s needs are greatest. Old age is a time of life when people often need to rely on family, friends, and other social relationships for care they are no longer able to provide for themselves. If an elderly adult lacks those relationships, however,...
