I have one... very outdoorsy guy I've met a bunch of times -- super friendly, we've gone skiing together a few times; his wife attends my yoga classes practices and I babysit their kid now and again.

The other day I learned (from someone else) that he had hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. I knew he was successful at his craft and making a decent living, but no clue about this. Having gotten to know him IRL and as a real human rather than a portrayed online persona is a bliss; knowing the number in hindsight doesn't change how I see him/think about him, but having known it before probably would have changed my interactions somewhat.

Anyway, Mr. Nriapia is out in the FT talking about the economic power of social networks.

Researchers have long known that one’s social network is important for a range of economic outcomes, from the job search to the marriage market. But recent research suggests it might also be central to social mobility. In fact, having pals across class boundaries appears to be one of the strongest predictors of upward mobility for people in low socio-economic groups.

It's very Chetty et al social mobility/class emphasis... that was hip af a while back; died down a bit

children who grow up in areas with more cross-class mixing go on to earn more on average, controlling for parents’ income. To isolate the effect of the county itself, the researchers tracked families who moved. Assuming those moves were not related to their children’s future prospects — a reasonable assumption — the analysis found that people who spent a larger portion of their childhood in a better-connected county went on to earn more.

"environments such as churches and sports clubs are particularly effective for integrating people beyond class lines."

policymaker efforts to better distribute children between schools could reverse this. One example comes from Brighton and Hove, whose council prioritises free school meal-eligible children across the city over other children in a school catchment area to get a more even distribution of incomes across the region’s secondary education institutions.

== "Maybe your next unlikely friendship could be engineered by a policymaker."

Slightly more distasteful conclusion but okay.

archive: https://archive.md/PJ9Vt