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Differences between Portugal, Lithuania, and Switzerland that we
found in the previous section for the most part remained significant when
the effect of the composition of personal configurations, gender, educa-
tion, and cohort were taken into account. In other words, such factors
intensify the country effect, making the likelihood of developing bond-
ing and bridging social capital very different for people according to their
gender, education, configuration, and country of residence.
Conclusion
Social capital structures produced by personal networks differ across
Switzerland, Portugal, and Lithuania. Individuals living in Switzerland
have a much greater likelihood of developing bridging social capital,
especially if they have a Friendship personal network and a higher level of
education, and if they are female. In Portugal, which is more oriented
towards bonding social capital, the composition of personal networks
matters less for bridging social capital, which is very low in all cases. In
Lithuania, the situation is in between, with configurations centred on
children producing significantly more bonding social capital than other
configurations.
Overall, this chapter showed that various dimensions of the social
organisation of each country, captured by welfare regime types and
social structures, shape the social capital available to individuals in their
personal networks by decreasing or increasing the salience of family ties
in them. Some evidence points to the fact that personal networks are
influenced by a country’s level of social development (Ganjour and
Widmer 2016 ), a concept which relates to the complexity and length of
the chains of interdependence through which individuals respond to
their economic and social needs (Elias 1995 ). In Portugal, individuals
are embedded in bounded personal networks, which are based on a
diversity of kinship and non-kinship ties. The limitations of the general
wealth of society, which affect institutions such as the educational sys-
tem and the welfare state, as well as the constrained labour and housing
market, make it more likely that individuals will be embedded in short
and homogeneous chains of interdependence within their personal net-
E.D. Widmer et al.