Socio-economic segregation in a population-scale social network

Abstract

We propose a social network-aware approach to study socio-economic segregation. The key question that we address is whether patterns of segregation are more pronounced in social networks than in the common spatial neighborhood-focused manifestations of segregation. We, therefore, conduct a population-scale social network analysis to study socio-economic segregation at a comprehensive and highly granular social network level. For this, we utilize social network data from Statistics Netherlands on 17.2 million registered residents of the Netherlands that are connected through around 1.3 billion ties distributed over five distinct tie types. We take income assortativity as a measure of socio-economic segregation, compare a social network and spatial neighborhood approach, and find that the social network structure exhibits two times as much segregation. As such, this work complements the spatial perspective on segregation in both literature and policymaking. While at a widely used unit of spatial aggregation (e.g., the geographical neighborhood), patterns of socio-economic segregation may appear relatively minimal, they may in fact persist in the underlying social network structure. Furthermore, we discover higher social network segregation in larger cities, shedding a different light on the common view of cities as hubs for diverse socio-economic mixing. A population-scale social network perspective hence offers a way to uncover hitherto “hidden” segregation that extends beyond spatial neighborhoods and infiltrates multiple aspects of human life.