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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2025–09–29
six papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Augustin Bergeron |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how colonial religious institutions reshaped traditional social structures in Africa. Focusing on the Congo, I examine the long-term effects of Christian missions that sought to replace kin-based authority with European-Christian notions of social and moral order. I combine newly digitized data on historical mission locations with an original survey of 975 respondents, measuring attitudes toward family and coethnics, social network composition, referral behavior in a job experiment, and moral values. To address concerns about endogenous mission placement, I construct two counterfactuals: missions that were initially established but later abandoned, and simulated locations that were historically suitable but never selected. I find that exposure to missions persistently reduced bias toward kin and coethnics and weakened the role of kinship ties in networks and referrals. It also eroded communal moral values, such as loyalty to one's group and deference to authority, without a corresponding rise in universal moral principles. Instead, these shifts reflect a redirection of identity and moral obligation from kinship and ethnicity toward religious affiliation. Historical records on mission personnel and infrastructure point to religious instruction and education as key transmission channels. Together, the findings suggest that colonial religious institutions profoundly reshaped the social and moral organization of colonized societies. |
| JEL: | N0 O1 Z12 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34262 |
| By: | Cowan, Benjamin (Washington State University); Jones, Todd R. (Mississippi State University) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how people adjust their time use when experiencing more time alone, a growing share of adults’ lives. We exploit the dramatic rise in remote work following the onset of the pandemic, which sharply reduced time spent with non-household members during the workday, to study whether individuals substitute toward more in-person interactions outside of work. On days individuals work from home, they spend 3.5 more hours in activities spent entirely alone and over 5 fewer hours in activities that include any non-household members. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we compare pre- and post-pandemic changes in time use for workers in teleworkable versus non-teleworkable occupations to ask what happens to time allocations when workers are induced toward remote work. Averaging over all days, teleworkable workers spend 32 more minutes in activities spent entirely alone and 38 fewer minutes in activities that include any non-household members. Normalizing by their 46-minute increase in remote work, these effects are of a similar magnitude to our descriptive estimates. We find almost no substitution toward spending more time with others outside the household to offset lost in-person interactions at work. |
| Keywords: | social isolation, work from home, time use |
| JEL: | J22 J24 I31 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18112 |
| By: | Battaglia, Marianna (Universidad de Alicante); Egyir, John (University of Barcelona); Garcia-Hombrados, Jorge (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) |
| Abstract: | We examine the empirical relationship between exposure to disasters and tightness of social norms, focusing on the practice of female genital cutting (FGC) in Sub-Saharan Africa. Social norms tightness refers to the extent to which cultural groups enforce adherence to norms and punish deviations. It is a key factor in shaping how societies function and individuals behave, influencing everything from social order and conflict to collective effort and institutional dynamics, and often emerges and evolves as an adaptive response to adverse events. Drawing on occurrences of epidemics and natural disasters, we find that individuals surveyed in the aftermath of a disaster in their region adhere 4 to 6 percent of a standard deviation more closely to the opinions about FGC in their groups compared to those interviewed just before the disaster occurred. This effect is particularly pronounced among women and rural populations. By examining variations in early life exposure to disasters across birth cohorts within countries, we find that this effect persists over time and is strongest when the disaster occurs during the transition from childhood to early adolescence. |
| Keywords: | natural disasters, epidemics, cooperation, social norms, Sub-Saharan Africa |
| JEL: | D1 D7 I15 O1 O55 Z1 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18144 |
| By: | Rotondi, Valentina (University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Italian Switzerland) |
| Abstract: | Care is foundational to human development and economic resilience, yet remains largely invisible in economic theory and policy. This paper presents a formal model in which support for redistributive care policies depends on three belief channels: the perceived publicness of care, its productivity, and its prosocial value. The model shows that public coordination reduces variance in received care, increasing the likelihood that vulnerability becomes productive. Empirically, we combine two approaches. First, we analyze World Values Survey data from 25 countries (2017–2022), linking individual attitudes to a novel folktale-based index that captures the cultural salience of care-related virtues versus harm-related vices. Countries scoring higher on this index show greater support for redistributive care; civic participation also plays an independent role. Second, an incentivized framing experiment in Italy reveals that framing care as a private responsibility reduces donations to a pooled care fund by 6–8 percentage points. Together, these findings suggest that institutions and shared narratives jointly shape attitudes toward care. Recognizing care as social infrastructure—and designing time regimes and services that foster trust—may be key to building resilient and inclusive economies. |
| Date: | 2025–09–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:p579d_v1 |
| By: | De Paola, Maria (University of Calabria); Nistico, Roberto (University of Naples Federico II); Scoppa, Vincenzo (University of Calabria) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of co-workers’ fertility on individual fertility decisions. Using matched employer-employee data from Italian social security records (2016–2020), we estimate how fertility among co-workers of similar age and occupation affects the individual likelihood of having a child. We exploit variation introduced by the 2015 Jobs Act, which reduced fertility among workers hired under weaker employment protection. Focusing on workers hired before the reform and using the share of colleagues hired after the reform as an instrument for peer fertility, we find that a one-percentage-point increase in peer fertility raises individual fertility by 0.4 percentage points (a 10% increase). Heterogeneity analysis suggests that while social influence and social norms are key mechanisms, information sharing and career concerns, particularly among women, tend to moderate the response. Our findings highlight how changes in employment protection may have unintended fertility spillovers through workplace social interactions. |
| Keywords: | social learning, fertility, EPL, career concerns, social norms, workplace |
| JEL: | C3 J13 J65 J41 M51 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18127 |
| By: | Johnston, David W. (Monash University); Knott, Rachel (Monash University); Menon, Nidhiya (Brandeis University) |
| Abstract: | Although studies have evaluated the costs of violating the male breadwinner norm, little is known about the mental health consequences, particularly for common conditions such as depression and anxiety. We explore this issue using Australian national administrative tax and healthcare records. We estimate individual- and employer-level fixed models of mental health service use and prescription medication. We find that men are significantly more likely to use mental health care following periods when their wife earns more, with the strongest effects emerging two years after the earnings shift. By contrast, we find no consistent effects for women. Our results are robust to alternative specifications, including the inclusion of controls for labour market shocks, and an alternative estimation strategy based on a local linear regression discontinuity design. We find that couples are also more likely to separate following norm violations, suggesting relationship strain as a key mechanism. Complementary evidence on relationship satisfaction from Australian household survey data provide further support of this pathway. Our findings demonstrate that traditional gender identity norms impose psychosocial costs within modern households. |
| Keywords: | medication, mental health, relative income, relationship strain, separation |
| JEL: | D10 J12 J16 J31 J22 I10 I12 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18141 |