Economic Growth and Social Poverty: The Evolution of Social Participation

We develop an evolutionary model of growth in which agents choose how to allocate their time between private and social activities. We argue that a shift from social to private activities may foster market-based growth, but also generate social poverty. Within a formal framework that merges a game theoretic analysis of the evolution of social participation with a model of dynamic accumulation of its effects on social environment (i.e., of social capital accumulation), we show that growth and well-being may evolve in opposite directions (a plausible outcome for advanced and affluent societies).