Social capital → Employment status
Who you know is a hiring channel. It is also a backdoor in every supplement-and-success regression.
Observational · High confidence
Supported by an experiment or a tightly identified design. Still read the caveats.
Mechanism
Granovetter (1973): novel job information arrives through weak ties. Later labor work keeps finding network effects on matching. That makes social capital a real arrow to employment and a confounder for purchasable health inputs.
Caveats
Not an RCT of 'make more acquaintances'. Homophily means networks and education travel together.
Effect
qualitative. Weak ties carry job information. This is sociology, not endocrinology.
Nodes
Named confounders
Cite this page
What Causes What. “Social capital → Employment status.” https://whatcauseswhat.org/edges/e-network-employment (atlas updated 2026-08-31).
Papers
- The strength of weak ties
M. S. Granovetter · 1973 · American Journal of Sociology