Pena-López, AtilanoRungo, PaoloSánchez Santos, José Manuel2021-08-232021-08-232021Atilano Pena-López, Paolo Rungo, José Manuel Sánchez-Santos, Inequality and individuals’ social networks: the other face of social capital, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Volume 45, Issue 4, July 2021, Pages 675–694, https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/beab0161464-3545http://hdl.handle.net/2183/28273Financiado para publicación en acceso aberto: Universidade da Coruña/CISUG[Abstract] Social capital is a controversial concept, which is used in economics as a generic form of pro-sociality and a simple means to introduce the social context into mainstream approaches. However, the accepted view underestimates social conflict and does not properly characterise social capital as an asset. When considering these issues, a different face of social capital emerges, one that can be associated with closure and privilege maintenance. This paper studies how access to and the extraction of social network resources depend on the social structure. By analysing data from a survey that included a position and a resource generator, we find that for the case of Spanish society, people endowed with high levels of economic and human capital enjoy improved accessibility and networks with a high prevalence of instrumental relations. There is essential inequality in the endowment of social capital, which augments economic inequality. When inequality is socially embedded, traditional redistributive policies may have limited effectiveness.engAtribución-NoComercial 4.0 Internacionalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/Social capitalInequalitySocial stratificationLin’s modelBourdieujournal articleopen access