Social capital can be defined as a person or group’s sympathy, empathy, or sense of obligation for another person or group. Using several indirect social capital measures, social capital has been shown to be related to the level of income and income inequality in the United States. However, research examining social capital and its relationship to household income distribution in Latin America is lacking. This study tested the hypothesis that social capital indicators are correlated with income inequality in the selected Latin American countries. Estimated results using regression analysis show that some social capital indicators such as population of urban single parent household, and years of schooling are correlated with income inequality. Years of schooling completed by urban female population has strong negative correlation with income inequality while the population of urban single female parent is positively correlated with income inequality. However, the estimation results from different models are inconsistent from one another. Future research should consider additional specification of the models. More insights on how social capital are associated with income inequality in Latin America could be potentially gained by using models with additional variables and country data.
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