TY  - JOUR
AU  - Helliwell,John F.
TI  - Do Borders Matter for Social Capital? Economic Growth and Civic Culture in U.S. States and Canadian Provinces
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5863
PY  - 1996
Y2  - December 1996
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5863
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5863.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
John F. Helliwell
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
and Department of Economics
University of British Columbia
997-1873 East Mall
Vancouver BC V6T 1Z1
CANADA
Tel: 604/822-4953
Fax: 604/822-5915
E-Mail: john.helliwell@ubc.ca
AB  - The paper first assesses regional and ethnic group differences in social trust and memberships in both Canada and the United States.  The ethnic categories people choose to describe themselves are as important as regional differences, but much less important than education, in explaining differences in trust.  Respondents who qualify their nationality by any of seven adjectives, a feature more prevalent in the United States than in Canada, (black, white, Hispanic and Asian in the United  States; French, English and Ethnic in Canada) have lower levels of trust than those who consider themselves Canadians or Americans either first or only. The dispersion of incomes across states or provinces has been dropping in both countries,  but faster in Canada than in the United States. The 1980s increase in regional income disparity in the United States has no parallel in Canada.  In neither country is there evidence that per capita economic growth is faster in regions marked by high levels of trust.  However, U.S. migrants tend to move to states with higher perceived levels of trust, thus contributing to higher total growth in those states.  The economic responsiveness of migration appears to be even stronger in Canada than in the United States, despite the much more extensive systems of fiscal equalization and social safety nets in Canada.
ER  -