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However, in contrast to Portugal, personal networks are narrower and
mostly comprised of nuclear family members, primarily children and
partners. Inclusion of friends and other non-kin members in personal
networks is a very rare phenomenon in Lithuania. Interestingly, the
density of support is rather low. These findings suggest that low stan-
dards of living and a limited welfare state, along with echoes from
almost half a century under totalitarian communist rule, pressure indi-
viduals to direct their accumulation of social capital to their closest
family relationships, the ones they can trust the most.
Despite the differences across the three national contexts, country
effects should not be seen as the only factor shaping personal networks.
Beyond their differences, personal networks in the three countries have
significant commonalities, each country belonging for the time being to
the European sphere of economic, cultural, and political influence.
Indeed, what dominates the constitution of social capital in personal net-
works is their composition. As we saw in the previous chapter, such com-
position comes directly from differentials in the demographic reservoirs,
transitions, gender, the life course, and the social class of focal individu-
als. Those effects build up to produce strong inequalities in social capital
for individuals.
Notes
- Usually, focal individuals (Ego’s) are the most central nodes in the graph,
as the family network method measures personal networks, also called
Ego-networks. - Empty networks were not included in the graph, as their measures are
equal to 0. - One exception is friendship networks in Lithuania, which show high den-
sity of support and a low centralisation. But the very small percentage of
friendship networks in Lithuania, with only 4%, makes the case a rarity,
and its sample basis rather small. - This is obviously mostly true for men in Switzerland. For women, espe-
cially mothers, the dependence on one family member, namely their hus-
band, remains very high in large segments of Swiss society (Levy and
Widmer 2013).
E.D. Widmer et al.