The structure of social capital in Austria: Subjective and objective determinants

This paper seeks to address the relationship between social capital and perceived social origin in contemporary Austria. While the concept of social capital has been widely adopted in social sciences, so far research on the (pre)structured shape of social capital by social origin is scarce. Our aim is to close this gap. Therefore, we use the network-as-capital approach by following the “position generator” and apply latent class analysis (LCA) and path modelling on the basis of the 2018 Austrian Social Survey. The dataset comprises a representative sample of the Austrian residential population aged 18 and older. Our findings show that the diversity of social capital, and access to networks of people in more highly ranked positions is strongly influenced by one’s social background. The higher respondents assess their social origin, the greater the probability of being in this type of network. Furthermore, education and occupation have effects on membership in a class-specific network.