Letter of the week: Informal indicators can give a fuller picture of social cohesion

I refer to  the article “Signs of social cohesion coming under strain in Singapore: IPS director” (Jan 21). Policymakers rely on the technical definition of social capital and on empirical measurements such as the number of close friends people have to assess the level of social cohesion. 

Such measurements may be statistically meaningful but may fall short of reflecting the breadth and depth of the social fabric as experienced by people. 

Perhaps policymakers may wish to extend their scope to unofficial indicators to complement their situational grasp of social cohesion. 

A parallel example of unofficial indicators as used in economics is the Big Mac index.

 Comparing the prices of the burger in different countries gives a wider sense of the accuracy of the official purchasing power parity figure, which measures how much
one can buy in different countries with a given sum of money.

Regarding social cohesion, such informal indicators to help work out which way things are going would be those that look at general social behaviour or decision-making of different groups of people.

For example, what sports activities different socio-economic groups engage in might give us a rough gauge of the social divide among people based on the sports they identify with socially.

Generally, a person who finds the community he lives in to be hospitable to his needs would tend to be more participative in helping others in the community. 

So an unofficial indicator of social cohesion would be the physical participation level of volunteers in religious communities or self-help groups such as support groups and food banks.

Such unofficial indicators may not provide the hard data to back the decisions of policymakers but they certainly crystallise the people aspect that the hard data may be missing out. 

A picture of our state of cohesion can come alive only by understanding its emotional dimension.

Lai Yew Chan