Nathan Eagle, a social science and engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has shown thatthe economic development of a region is directly related to the diversity of the social relations of its citizens. In other words, the more diverse a person’s social network, the more social and economic opportunities they have. And more contributes to the opportunities in your environment.
As revealed today by researchers in the journalScience, to reach this conclusion, they combined UK telephone records with detailed information on regional economic conditions. With this database they investigated the social networks of its inhabitants taking into account parameters such as income, employment, education, health, crime, housing and environmental quality. In this way they confirmed that economic opportunities most likely come from contacts outside a small and narrow group of local friends.
“Social networks form the backbone of social and economic life,” the article notes. The authors cautioned that the causal relationship cannot be clearly established, meaning that it is not clear whether the more diverse personal ties provide more economic and social opportunities, or whether it is these that stimulate the most diverse ties. But it is clear thatthe diversity of the social networks of the members of a community is largely responsible for its global economic development.
