The Economic Implications of Social Cohesion

Barb Bloemhof is an assistant professor in the Department of Sport
Management at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.

This collection of eight articles provides a diverse look at the ways
community affects socio-economic outcomes. Contributions examine social
capital and economic growth, comparing Canada and the United States; the
linkages between investment in social capital and their effect on
cohesion and community; the special importance of community for
children’s well-being and development; how social cohesion and health
outcomes are related; the relation between volunteerism and
public-sector expenditures as they relate to social cohesion; the
economic benefits of community as evidenced by educational attainment;
the impact of social connections on macro-economic performance; and the
effect of social cohesion on production investment.

Social cohesion is defined somewhat differently by each contributor. An
effective definition is given by Lavis and Stoddart: “the networks,
norms and trust that bring people together to take action.” Such a
clear definition can be an important starting point in ensuring that an
analysis remains focused, as Lavis and Stoddart’s does. All the
authors begin by defining terms, but some are less successful at keeping
the analyses that follow in line with that definition. For example,
social cohesion is frequently proxied by volunteerism (a central part of
the available data from the World Values Survey and similar Canadian
surveys that contributors use to support their models), but it is only a
part of what builds social cohesion. Furthermore, the motivations for
volunteering are heterogeneous, and therefore imply more complex
linkages and outcomes for social cohesion. This point is sometimes
unexplored. Likewise—and productively for the research agenda—more
questions are raised than are answered about how social cohesion shapes
economic outcomes.

The book makes several policy recommendations and includes an
interesting proposal made by McCracken for ways that the government can
restore consensus-based social and economic policy capabilities. The
conclusions on child outcomes were only the most convincing of a
thought-provoking and highly readable set of papers.