Title:
ANALYSING THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL CAPITAL ON HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: AN EMPIRICAL LITERATURE REVIEW

Authors:
Arsène Honoré Gidéon Nkama, Cameroon

Abstract:
A literature survey of the effects of social capital on human development suggests that only the effects of social capital on selected human development dimensions such as income, education and health are investigated. No direct effect of social capital on human development is captured, underlining that the literature is relatively silent about these effects. Also, in our knowledge, this literature seems relatively old. It is more concentrated in the period between early 1990s and early 2000s. Based on a critical empirical literature survey, this paper summarises the effects of social capital on human development and outlines pathways to capture the direct effects of the former on the latter. The first pathway deals with the consideration of social capital as an ‘efficient cause’ of all human development dimensions. The second simply considers social capital as a capability. Finally, the third pathway suggests the integration of a social capital variable in a function where human development is a dependent variable. Using these approaches would be of good value added for the literature because it would enlarge the space of methodological approaches of analysing the effects of social capital on human development.