6.2a Capital

What is Economic Capital?

Capital is the resources and traits an individual holds that have social value or influence. For example, income and wealth are forms of economic capital or material assets. Incomecomes from paid work, interest from a bank account, or rental property. Wealth includes investments, and assets—like real estate, jewelry, art, stocks, and bonds—that typically increase in value and can transformed into cash. The wealth of most U.S. households that have any is from home ownership. Other forms of capital include social, cultural, and symbolic capital. 

What is Social Capital?

Social capital refers to people’s connections with others (who they know) and their influence over others (Wallace & Wolf, 1999). For example, knowing other people at college before arriving offers benefits like instant social support (Armstrong & Hamilton, 2013). The benefits of social capital extend after graduation, too. For instance, well-connected parents can tap their social networks to help their children obtain jobs that maintain their family’s social class (Armstrong & Hamilton, 2013; see also Hamilton et al., 2018).

What is Cultural Capital?

Cultural capital consists of soft skills like manners, ways of speaking and dressing, habits, and tastes that help a person fit in (Turner, 1998). In his study of low-income students at highly selective universities such as Harvard, Jack (2019) found that they face several disadvantages because they did not have the cultural capital of their classmates. These students tend to come from two tracks: the privileged poor and the doubly disadvantaged. The privileged poor attended exclusive preparatory and boarding high schools. Therefore, they had already been socialized into settings mainly occupied by wealthy White people. The doubly disadvantaged had attended under-resourced public high schools with other low-income students. They did not have support in high school to prepare them academically and socially for highly selective universities. Both groups were disadvantaged by their poverty. However, the privileged poor had the cultural capital to fit in at highly selective universities. Therefore, they were advantaged compared to their low-income peers on the same campus.

Photo 6.3

Students at Preparatory Schools Gain Social and Cultural Capital

What is Symbolic Capital?

Symbolic capital is the status linked with membership in a social category, which a person can use to claim other forms of capital (economic, social, and cultural) (Turner, 1998). For example, a degree from an Ivy League university can open doors that degrees from other schools can not because of the symbolic capital associated with the university the degree came from.