While it may be that joining groups helps augment one's income, it is also possible that some groups are akin to consumption goods and thus, having more income, leads one to join more groups. The formulation of an index of group membership in this paper was deliberately inclusive and did not distinguish by group function. To some extent this is a weakness in the analysis, particularly if one is interested in evaluating possible policy responses. Future work will disaggregate the index in different directions, including function and characteristics, especially gender, as well as consider other possible measures of social capital, such as family networks. DP69 Download full-text discussion paper .
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