Social sustainability indicators and their relationship with the concept of social capital

When conducting a review of the state of the art in the field of social sustainability, two particular situations become evident: the first is that the social dimension of sustainability has been gaining importance in development theories and policies worldwide. The second is that, despite the above, the social dimension of sustainability is the least studied and the most difficult to measure due to the nature and complexity of its indicators. This article proposes a reflection on these measurement mechanisms, in order to determine which indicators of the social capital concept are useful for understanding and measuring social sustainability. To this end, a review of the literature is made, comparing indicator systems applied to both concepts. Given the complexity of these indicators, the scope of this study is outlined as a series of conclusions derived from the reflection on the complementarity, differences and relationships between the measurement systems analyzed, which is potentially useful in the elaboration of concrete indicators in subsequent studies.