Social Connectedness: Measurement, Determinants, and Effects

We introduce a new measure of social connectedness between U.S. county pairs, as well as between U.S. counties and foreign countries. Our measure, which we call the Social Connectedness Index (SCI), is based on the number of friendship links on Facebook, the world’s largest online social network. Within the U.S., social connectedness is strongly decreasing in geographic distance between counties. The population of counties with more geographically-dispersed social networks is richer, more educated, and has higher life expectancy. Region-pairs that are more socially connected have higher trade flows, even after controlling for geographic distance and the similarity of regions along other demographic and socioeconomic measures. Higher social connectedness is also associated with more cross-county migration and patent citations. Social connectedness between U.S. counties and foreign countries is correlated with past migration patterns, with social connectedness decaying in the time since the primary migration wave from that country. Trade with foreign countries is also strongly related to the social connectedness with those countries. These results suggest that the SCI captures an important role of social networks in facilitating economic and social interactions. Our findings highlight the potential for the SCI to mitigate the measurement challenges that pervade empirical literatures that study the role of social interactions across the social sciences.