A test of social capital theory outside of the American context: Family and school social capital and youths’ math scores in Canada, Japan, and the United States

Within the area of youth studies, social capital theory (SCT) has been widely used to explain achievement disparities. Although this theory has gained popularity, few researchers have tested it outside of the US context. This paper tests one dimension of SCT: that social capital has a positive effect on young people's academic achievement within three randomly drawn samples of 15-year-olds in Canada, Japan, and the United States. By doing this, I examine the theory's utility for explaining disparities in youths’ academic achievement outside of the US context. This is particularly important because the theory has gained widespread acceptance in youth studies and amongst policy researchers, even though it has not been tested using a variety of data sets. If supported, all of the measures of social capital will have a positive influence on achievement levels in each of the three data sets.