Raj Chetty, winner of the RSA’s Benjamin Franklin Medal and Founder of Opportunity Insights, speaks with journalist Helen Lock about his work exploring the vital role of social capital in fostering economic mobility and rebuilding trust in society. Chetty argues that greater social connectedness is key to restoring upward mobility and combatting societal divisions. By studying patterns of social interaction, Chetty and his team reveal how diverse interventions can create more opportunities for all.
Eight minutes
For Raj Chetty – Harvard Professor and recipient of the RSA’s Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2024 – social capital is the bedrock of economic mobility. So how can we revive it?
Can taking steps to increase social capital be the key to improving trust in society? It’s well documented that trust in governments has declined globally in recent decades. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that in 2023, 44% of populations had “low or no trust in public institutions”. Since 2007, the percentage of Americans saying they trust the government has stayed consistently at 30% or below, from highs of more than 70% in the 1950s. And according to the National Centre for Social Research in the UK, trust in government was at a record low in 2024.
For Raj Chetty, William A. Ackman Professor of Economics at Harvard University and Director of Opportunity Insights, declining social capital is a key factor in these trends. Access to social capital helps drive the upward mobility needed to improve people’s outlook and trust in society, yet it tends to be overlooked in policymaking, he argues. “Social capital is a piece that’s particularly relevant and that is something we’ve spent less time on,” he says. He notes that while social scientists have often cited social capital as being crucial to upward mobility, “it’s challenging to measure, therefore making it difficult to study its impact and how it can be increased”.
It’s a challenge that Chetty and his colleagues at Opportunity Insights, the Harvard-based research organisation he leads, have embraced. They use big data analysis to understand how social capital and, more specifically, economic connectedness (defined as the degree of interaction between low- and high-income people) help people’s chances of improving the quality of their lives, then identify patterns.
It was access to educational opportunity, as well as social connections, that helped spur Chetty’s success and his lifelong interest in widening access to opportunity. “There are numerous instances in which social connections have changed my and my family’s trajectory… numerous high school teachers and advisers at Harvard who fundamentally changed and shaped my interests in pursuing social science,” he says.
Chetty moved to the US from New Delhi, India, as a nine-year-old and saw “the tremendous contrast and difference in opportunity between the two countries”. A generation back, Chetty’s parents happened to be the only children in each of their families afforded the chance to get a higher level of education, and that cascaded down the generations. “It always struck me that there are many other talented kids out there, including my cousins, who have not had the same opportunities [as himself and his sisters].”
The ultimate goal of Opportunity Insights, therefore, is simple: to understand and widen access to opportunity.
Opportunity Insights’ work reveals the consequences of an entrenched lack of social mobility. For example, its 2017 research into “lost Einsteins” looked at economic status in conjunction with the rate of invention. By linking US patent data to income tax records, they found that people from lower-income backgrounds invent at a much lower rate. “If women, minorities, and children from low-income families were to invent at the same rate as white men from high-income families, the rate of innovation in America would quadruple,” the study states. “We also found that exposure to innovation, seeing examples of it, substantially raises the chances that children become inventors,” says Chetty.
In a similar vein, Chetty’s team have also studied what they describe as the fading American Dream, so-called because the defining feature of the American Dream is upward mobility – and now, the notion that anyone can achieve success in the US has stalled. They found that 90% of children born in 1940 in the US went on to earn more than their parents by age 30, but only 50% of children born in the 1980s did (at the time the findings were published, in 2017).
It’s only by first identifying these trends and barriers, though, that real progress can begin. “We believe there are things that can be done to reverse this trend [of low economic mobility] and our research seeks to support the development of scalable solutions,” says Chetty.
With populist leaders gaining power globally, there are no shortage of explanations (including declining trust in public institutions) as to why voters are turning to divisive politicians. Lack of economic mobility is connected to that lack of trust, Chetty says. “Interestingly, that link is stronger with measures of economic mobility than it is with measures of inequality. So, it’s not just about places where some people earn a lot and others don’t, it’s about places where people are not getting ahead – not having opportunities to get ahead.”
The first step in the process of rebuilding trust is to acknowledge this reality,
Chetty says. The data shows that even groups who have traditionally been more advantaged are now struggling to move forward. “Low-income white Americans, for example, are experiencing some of the greatest declines in economic mobility… even in parts of the country where traditionally you’d have pretty good chances of rising up.”
“We should be interested in figuring out how we can improve economic mobility for groups who have been experiencing the biggest declines recently, but also for Black Americans and all the other folks who’ve traditionally had less opportunity – and for whom opportunity gaps remain quite large.”
… it’s not just about places where some people earn a lot and others don’t, it’s about places where some people are not getting ahead – not having opportunities to get ahead.
Chetty argues that “social capital interventions”, where policymakers and leaders take action specifically targeted at improving access to social capital, could help in these neighbourhoods where people feel stuck.
Through their research mapping social capital, which included analysing 21 billion Facebook friendship connections, his team have identified three aspects of social capital as a phenomenon. These are “economic connectedness” (the level of interaction between low-income and high-income people); “cohesiveness” (the extent to which social networks are fragmented into cliques of a similar background); and “civic engagement” (the rate of volunteering and participation in community organisations).
The impact of even small improvements across all three areas could be huge. “Relative to other measures such as poverty rates or the quality of K–12 education [primary and secondary school] we find economic connectedness, so, cross-class relationships, is the strongest predictor for understanding where children have the greatest chances of rising out of poverty.”
Is it possible to get people from low-income and high-income groups to socialise more, though? Chetty says that some steps can address what he describes as “friending bias” and “exposure”.
“Policy leaders can explore strategies to increase it, such as mixed-income housing, shifting zoning laws to permit higher-density development, and changing the composition of high school or college classes.” Smaller class sizes in schools are beneficial because they make it easier for students and their families to get to know one another. Leaders might also consider other ways to foster connection, such as looking at the design of public spaces, he adds.
Chetty also suggests that education and skills institutes could do more to connect people to an employer who’s looking to hire, while universities could provide mentors that help, for example, a first-generation student navigate higher education.
Working directly with policymakers to hash out real-world policies is a major part of Opportunity Insights’ mission, and Chetty says there’s interest in taking action from both the right and the left. Opportunity Insights has begun to pilot ways to improve access to “higher-opportunity neighbourhoods” for people from lower-opportunity neighbourhoods, for example, and they are helping community nonprofits to use their data in a way that more effectively informs their organisational decision-making.
“While it might be hard to say we can implement a policy to create a more cohesive community, there are things we can do. We’re finding that in many different contexts, pairing social capital support with traditional interventions – economic or education – is much more effective.”
Chetty says that the next stage of the research is to dive deeper into their analysis of communities with high economic connectedness and establish more causal relationships. “For example, we’re analysing if students with more cross-class friendships are more likely to go to college.”
Ultimately, Chetty wants to see the power of this research unleashed. “I want to see a society where people can achieve their purpose… doing good things for themselves and society, and not wasting talent.”
Helen Lock is a freelance journalist covering education, technology and social affairs for publications including The Guardian, WIRED, Times Higher Education and the TES.
Michelle Mildenberg Lara is an Amsterdam-based illustrator originally from Bogotá. She works digitally, with a focus on figurative drawing. Clients include UNESCO, The New Yorker and The New York Times.
This feature first appeared in RSA Journal Issue 1 2025.
