Friends with benefits: how diverse social connections drive economic mobility

In partnership with Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), Neighbourly Labs, Stripe Partners, Opportunity Insights and Meta, the research explores how the diversity of our friendships and connections influences life chances, earnings and wellbeing.

Quantitative Report

BIT’s report, Revealing social capital in the United Kingdom, is a groundbreaking analysis linking Facebook friendship data with UK income records shows how economic connectedness predicts social mobility across the country.

Ethnographic Report

The Neighbourly Lab report, Revealing Social Capital: An ethnographic study of cross-economic mixing‘s in-depth fieldwork in four communities reveals the human stories behind the data- how schools, workplaces, faith groups, and everyday social spaces help or hinder connection across class and circumstance.

Policy Recommendations

The RSA report, Friends with benefits: how diverse social connections drive economic mobility, sets out practical steps to build a more connected nation- from fairer school admissions and stronger community wealth funds, to “connectedness by design” in local services and new national measures of social capital.