Kinship and Friendship Networks among Swedish and Finnish Speaking Finns

Abstract

<p><span>Prior research has indicated that in Finland Swedish speakers have more social capital than Finnish </span><span>speakers in terms of social participation, social support, friendship ties and trust. However, no com</span><span>-</span><span>prehensive study has assessed the size of close kinship and friendship networks among both linguistic </span><span>groups. We compare the size of kinship and friendship networks in these language groups using popu</span><span>-</span><span>lation-based surveys of baby boomers, aged 68–73 years, and their adult children, aged 19–56 years </span><span>at the time of data collection. Overall, baby boomers reported larger close networks than did their </span><span>adult children. Swedish speakers reported slightly more close relatives than Finnish speakers did in the </span><span>older (6.9 vs. 6.1) and the younger generations (4.7 vs. 4.6) but the differences were not statistically </span><span>significant. However, Swedish speakers reported on average significantly larger close friendship net</span><span>-</span><span>works than Finnish speakers in both the older (7.4 vs. 5.3) and younger (5.6 vs. 4.2) generations. The </span><span>differences in close friendship networks remained significant after controlling for sex, age, and other </span><span>socio-demographic factors. Our results suggest that having more close friends is among the social cap</span><span>-</span><span>ital factors that characterize Swedish speaking Finns.</span><br></p>