Capital at Home and at School: A Review and Synthesis

Human, financial, and social capital from several contexts affects child and adolescent well-being. Families and schools are among the most important, and research is increasingly studying how effects of capital across such contexts affect child and adolescent academic and social outcomes. Some research suggests that families may be more powerful than schools in promoting child and adolescent wellbeing. Additional research is needed to more fully understand how capital across institutions interacts in producing child well-being, when and why multiple institutions or levels of analysis are relevant, and how several contexts can form chains of causation. Theories of social capital may promote increased conversation among researchers who study the same outcomes yet focus their analyses on different contexts.