Women, those who are older, and those with college degrees tend to have the largest numbers of core ties. People with large numbers of significant ties tend to be male, educated, and working in professional occupations.

Gender

Men most often maintain contact with only a small number of core ties. By contrast, equal percentages of women have small, medium, or large numbers of core ties. The opposite pattern appears when examining the number of significant (non-core) ties maintained by men and women. Women often maintain small or medium numbers of significant ties, and less often maintain large numbers of significant ties. By contrast, there is a greater percent of men with large numbers of significant ties, than men with medium or small numbers of significant ties.

Age

The mean age is slightly higher for those with large numbers of core ties (50 years old), than it is for those with small and medium numbers of core ties (47 and 46 years old, respectively). It is possible that age gives people time to develop these core ties. Unlike core ties, the number of significant ties maintained by respondents does not vary by age.

Employment Status

Those working full-time or part-time most often have a medium number of core ties, while those who are retired are more likely to have either a small or large number of core ties, and those that are unemployed are more likely to have a small number of core ties. By contrast, those working full-time are no more likely to have a medium number of significant ties than they are to have small or large number of significant ties. Those working part-time are more likely to have a medium number of significant ties, while those who are retired and unemployed are more likely to have a small number of significant ties.

Education

Those with college degrees often have a medium number of core ties. By contrast, those with high school degrees often have a small number of core ties. These findings are more pronounced for the number of significant ties. Those who have a college degree tend to have a medium or large number of significant ties. The opposite is true for those with high school or less education — they often have a smaller number of significant ties. Those with a college degree have an average of 34 significant ties, while those with high school or less education have a mean of only have 23 significant ties.

Community Type

A commonly held perception is that small communities foster large numbers of supportive and intimate relationships. The Social Ties data show that people living in rural areas are no more prone to have large numbers of core ties than they are to have small or medium numbers of core ties. The same is true for people living in suburban areas. However, those living in urban areas are more apt to have a small number of core and significant ties in their networks

Job Type

When taking the Social Ties survey, respondents gave us the name of their occupation. These responses were later coded as fitting into one of the following categories: professionals, working class and service class. Professional jobs include knowledge-based professional workers and business owners; working-class jobs include manual laborers and semi-skilled workers; service-class jobs include low-level sales and office workers.

The results show that people with professional or service-class jobs most often have a medium number of core ties. Meanwhile, people with working-class jobs most often have small or medium numbers of core ties.

Professionals most often have a large number of significant ties. People with service jobs most often have a medium number of significant ties, while people with working-class jobs most often have a small number of significant ties.