French researchers Karine Lamiraud and Henry Saffer examine the effects of work, human capital, and other factors on declining social interaction (via Mark Thoma).
People have fewer friends and visit them less often than in the
past. A popular explanation suggests that we’re working longer and have
less time for friends, but recent research finds little tradeoff
between working hours and social hours. The relevant tradeoffs, this
column suggests, are between types of social interaction…The effect of human capital, as
measured by education and age, is positive for membership activities but
negative for visiting relatives and friends … One possibility is that this effect results from the
productivity-enhancing aspect of education. Membership activities, like
employment, are goal-oriented. Education increases productivity both at work and
in membership activities. However, education has little effect on the
productivity of time spent visiting. Thus, an increase in education results in
greater productivity in membership activities and greater utility for the
individual. To put this more intuitively, education makes membership activities
more interesting and visiting less interesting. This shifts social interaction
to membership activities and away from visiting…Higher income increases memberships and decreases visiting, which
seems consistent with the education effect. Marriage tends to reduce all social
interactions, which suggests that a spouse is a substitute for other social
interactions. Children have a positive effect of membership in school and church
groups, which is probably the result of complementarity between these activities
and child care. Males tend to have less of all social interactions…
February 20th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
“Education is assumed, to varying degrees, to increase productivity. An increase in the productivity of time reduces the time cost of social interaction.”
The full paper makes the case that education increases productivity at fulfilling a membership association’s goals. But it’s quite a jump to imply that meeting the goals increases the benefit of the social interaction. So if education increases membership activities and decreases visiting, I would conjecture that education causes people to lose out on social interaction, not become more efficient at it.