How do neighbors influence investment in social capital? : Homeownership and length of residence

This paper uses individual data from Japan to explore how the circumstances of where a person resides is related to the degree of their investment in social capital. Controlling for unobserved area-specific fixed effects and various individual characteristics, I found; (1) Not only that homeownership and length of residence are positively related to investment in social capital, but also that rates of homeowners and long-time residents in a locality increase in an individual’s investments in social capital. (2) The effects of local neighborhood homeownership and local length of residence are distinctly larger than that of an individual’s.