Ethnic Diversity And Its Effects On Social Capital In Germany And The United States

The consequences of racial and ethnic diversity are of increasing interest, not only for researchers but also for politicians and the public. In this dissertation, I examine the effects of racial and ethnic diversity on social capital in Germany as well as in the United States. The first chapter addresses the association between diversity and various dimensions of social capital in the German context. These dimensions are trust, membership, and contact and include items like generalized trust, trust in friends and strangers, membership in clubs and organizations, and neighborly contact. I find that different social capital measures are differently related to diversity for Germans. In the second chapter, I examine the relationship between racial and ethnic diversity and generalized trust in the U.S. at different geographic levels. Specifically, I am studying if the census tract, the county, or the state are of importance for this relationship. The results show that smaller geographic areas are more important for the diversity-trust relationship and that not diversity per se but the presence of specific racial and ethnic groups is relevant for generalized trust. Based on these results, in the last chapter, I investigate under which circumstances diversity and generalized trust are related in the U.S. More specifically, I examine the moderating effect of racial and ethnic segregation in the diversity-trust relationship. The results show no support for a moderating effect of residential segregation.