Public Choice (2009) 138: 109–136 DOI 10.1007/s11127-008-9342-6 Does Wal-Mart reduce social capital? Art Carden · Charles Courtemanche · Jeremy Meiners Received: 19 June 2007 / Accepted: 11 July 2008 / Published online: 12 August 2008 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008 Abstract Social capital has attracted increasing attention in recent years. We use county- level and individual survey data to study how Wal-Mart affects social capital. Estimates us- ing several proxies for social capital—such as club membership, religious activity, time with friends, and other measures—do not support the thesis that “Wal-Mart destroys communi- ties” by reducing social capital. We measure exposure to Wal-Mart two ways: Wal-Marts per 10,000 residents and Wal-Marts per 10,000 residents aggregated over the years since 1979 to capture a more cumulative “Wal-Mart Effect.” We find that the coefficients on Wal-Mart’s presence are statistically insignificant in most specifications. Keywords Wal-Mart · Social capital · Community · Retail JEL Classification A10 · A13 · D00 · Z1 1 Introduction Does Wal-Mart destroy communities? County-level measures and data from individual sur- veys suggest not. While Wal-Mart’s “always low prices” have reduced the cost of living, some of the company’s critics argue that Wal-Mart kills small businesses, reduces wages, and reduces social connectedness. Goetz and Rupasingha (2006) argue that Wal-Mart re- duces social capital, but by applying their data, data on social capital collected by Putnam A. Carden ( ) Department of Economics and Business, Rhodes College, 2000 N. Parkway, Memphis, TN 38112, USA e-mail: cardena@rhodes.edu C. Courtemanche Department of Economics, Bryan School of Business and Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, PO Box 26165, Greensboro, NC 27402-6170, USA e-mail: cjcourte@uncg.edu J. Meiners AGREM LLC, 17122 North 3800, East Anchor, IL 61720, USA e-mail: agrem@agrem.com