Declining community bonds measurably impair schools, democracy, economy, and health.

Evidence

Social capital turns out to have forceful, even quantifiable effects on many different aspects of our lives. What is at stake is not merely warm, cuddly feelings or frissons of community pride. We shall review hard evidence that our schools and neighborhoods don’t work so well when community bonds slacken, that our economy, our democracy, and even our health and happiness depend on adequate stocks of social capital. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 70

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s core interest: social capital as causal infrastructure for mutual benefit, echoing the trust-and-cooperation literature from Milgrom and the diamond-trade studies. — connects to: Declining family and community bonds shrink each generation’s human capital. — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 231; Global power deliberately dismantles rooted community bonds to stay fluid and invincible — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 595; Declining family and community capital will reduce human capital unless formal organizations substitute — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 231

Broader Connections

• Declining family and community bonds shrink each generation’s human capital. #expands (0.85) — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 231
• Declining family and community capital will reduce human capital unless formal organizations substitute #expands (0.82) — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 231
• Global power deliberately dismantles rooted community bonds to stay fluid and invincible #complicates (0.75) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 595