Does social capital affect investment in human capital? Family ties and schooling decisions

Abstract

We analyse whether traditional sharing norms within kinship networks affect education decisions of poor black households in KwaZulu-Natal. Theory predicts that the size of the kinship network ambiguously impacts on the incentive to invest in human capital (due to opposing ‘empathy’ and ‘free-rider’ effects). Our empirical analysis, based on a range of different estimators, suggests the latter effect dominates: forced solidarity within the network discourages investments in human capital.