Why Some Countries Still Measure Wealth in Community

Money counts, but it doesn’t count everything. In many places, wealth is still read in relationships, obligations fulfilled, collective achievements, and the ability of people to show up for one another. This isn’t nostalgia. It’s a practical, lived system that allocates risk, care, and opportunity through networks rather than bank accounts. If you’ve ever watched a village build someone’s house over a weekend, seen a diaspora group fund a clinic back home, or joined a rotating savings group that helps neighbors invest and smooth out hard times, you’ve seen how community doubles as currency.

Why wealth is more than money

Economic growth doesn’t automatically translate into security or dignity. Cash can buy services in markets, but not every essential service is reliably on the market—or affordable—especially in low- and middle-income countries and even in overlooked pockets of wealthy nations. When public systems are thin and private options out of reach, social bonds become the infrastructure. That infrastructure has value: it keeps children fed when jobs disappear, provides emergency loans without predatory interest, and maintains norms that make communities livable.

The economics of reciprocity

Economists call it informal insurance. Families and neighbors spread risk by exchanging help across time: I attend your wedding and contribute today; you show up with labor or cash when my roof collapses next year. The “price” is reputation—trust earned by reliability. This system can be surprisingly efficient when incomes are volatile and formal credit is scarce. It’s not charity; it’s an investment in a mutual safety net.

Social capital as an asset class

Social capital—the networks, trust, and norms that enable cooperation—shows up in real outcomes: lower crime, faster disaster recovery, better public health. Studies consistently find that places with higher social trust have stronger economic performance per dollar spent because people waste less on policing, litigation, and redundancy. In other words, community lowers transaction costs. That savings is a form of wealth.

Cultural frameworks that prioritize the collective

Cultures shape what gets counted and celebrated. Several national and regional philosophies make community the standard unit of value.

• Ubuntu (Southern Africa): “I am because we are.” Personhood is realized in relationship. This anchors practices like extended family support and communal caregiving.

• Buen Vivir (Andean countries): Well-being is defined relationally—people with each other and with nature—rather than as individual consumption. It informs constitutional language and development planning in Ecuador and Bolivia.

• Fa’a Samoa (Samoa and the Pacific): Obligations to family and village drive resource sharing, communal labor, and decision-making through chiefs and councils.

• Bayanihan (Philippines): Mutual cooperation as an everyday ethic, historically visible in collective house moves and now in fundraisers and disaster response.

• Satoyama (Japan): An integrated approach to land and community stewardship where rural ecosystems and village networks co-manage resources.

These aren’t just slogans. They guide how time, money, and status are allocated. Helping kin or investing in a communal water system can confer more prestige than an individual purchase. That changes behavior at scale.

Why community wealth persists

Countries that “still measure wealth in community” often do so because the system works—especially under conditions where markets and states fall short or volatility is high.

Volatility and informal safety nets

Where incomes depend on agriculture, day labor, or small informal businesses, shocks are frequent: droughts, illness, price swings. Insurance markets may be weak, and government programs can be slow or narrow. Mutual aid steps in with speed and local knowledge. People know who needs help and who can help, which reduces targeting errors and administrative costs.

Remittances and diaspora ties

Remittances to low- and middle-income countries top hundreds of billions of dollars per year, often surpassing foreign aid and rivaling foreign investment. That money is social: it flows through kin and community associations to pay school fees, rebuild after storms, and co-finance infrastructure. Hometown associations in Mexico, Ghana, and the Philippines regularly co-fund clinics, roads, and scholarships with local governments—a form of cross-border civic capital.

Communal land and shared resources

In much of sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia, land is held or governed collectively. This secures access for extended families, prevents speculative displacement, and enables ecosystem-level management. Measured purely in private titles, the asset looks small; measured in sustained livelihoods and food security, it’s substantial.

Religious and customary obligations

Zakat in Muslim communities, tithes in Christian denominations, or offerings in Hindu and Buddhist traditions institutionalize giving. They turn generosity into routine, predictable flows of resources from those with surplus toward those in need. When formal redistribution is weak, these obligations act like social taxes that fund welfare from the bottom up.

How countries and communities actually measure it

While GDP dominates headlines, many governments and organizations track community wealth in more concrete ways.

National and regional frameworks

• Gross National Happiness (Bhutan): Includes pillars like community vitality, cultural diversity, and environmental resilience alongside income. Surveys ask about neighborly trust, time with family, and participation in groups.

• Wellbeing Budgets (New Zealand): Public spending decisions consider social connection, mental health, and cultural belonging as targets, not side effects.

• OECD’s Better Life Index: Encourages member countries to monitor civic engagement, safety, and work-life balance alongside income.

Local and informal indicators

Communities often keep their own scorecards—some explicit, some implicit:

• ROSCA and savings group membership rates (chamas in Kenya, tontines in West Africa, arisan in Indonesia).

• Frequency of communal labor days and turnout (e.g., harambee in Kenya).

• Volunteer hours and mutual aid group density.

• Remittance amounts tracked by local banks or money transfer agents.

• Participation in cooperatives (farm, fishing, credit unions).

• Trust surveys: “Would you trust a neighbor with your child in an emergency?” Simple, telling questions.

• Dispute resolution times via customary mechanisms—a proxy for social cohesion.

• Attendance and contribution at life-cycle events (births, funerals, weddings), which function as financial circuits and social audits.

These metrics don’t replace income data. They round it out, explaining why two places with similar GDP per capita can diverge in resilience, safety, and life satisfaction.

Case studies: community as currency in practice

Bhutan’s community vitality

Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness framework screens policy for impact on relationships, time use, and cultural participation. Village forestry groups co-manage resources, while monks and lay networks coordinate aid during crises. The result isn’t utopia—youth unemployment and migration pose challenges—but the policy architecture forces trade-offs into the open: don’t chase growth that erodes the social fabric that people depend on.

Kenya’s harambee and chamas

“Harambee” literally means “pull together” and describes a tradition of collective fundraising for school fees, medical costs, or public works. Chamas—rotating savings and credit groups—let members pool small sums and take turns receiving a larger payout. This supports micro-investments and cushions shocks. Mobile money turbocharged the model: M-Pesa and digital lending apps allow village-level solidarity to span cities and diaspora networks, but also introduce new risks like over-borrowing. The core idea holds: trust substitutes for collateral.

Andean Buen Vivir

In Ecuador and Bolivia, Buen Vivir elevates communal rights and environmental stewardship. Indigenous communities negotiate resource projects not only for royalties but for collective benefits: schools, clinics, irrigation. Success varies by politics and enforcement, yet the framework legitimizes communal claims that standard cost-benefit analyses might ignore. In practice, this can redirect funds toward shared assets rather than private windfalls.

Pacific islands and the “gift economy”

In Samoa, Tonga, and neighboring islands, remittances and ceremonial gift-giving channel substantial resources. Obligations are demanding—families contribute to church buildings, weddings, and funerals—but these flows also finance education, health care, and disaster recovery. The social ledger is public, which reinforces both generosity and accountability. Critics worry about burdens; advocates note the system’s reliability when distance and storms isolate communities.

What community wealth does better

Resilience under shock

When earthquakes hit Japan or typhoons strike the Philippines, neighborhoods with active associations and rehearsal rituals (disaster drills, savings groups, shared tools) recover faster. Local knowledge and trust move people out of harm’s way before help arrives. The time saved saves lives.

Crime prevention and social order

Places where adults informally supervise streets, know teenagers by name, and coordinate with local leaders see lower petty crime and violence. Formal policing is still necessary, but community cohesion reduces the caseload.

Health and aging

Loneliness kills. Communities with frequent social contact and mutual caregiving—whether through extended families or neighborhood groups—see better mental health and longer healthy lifespans. In “blue zones” like Okinawa, moai (small social circles) share money, food, and attention across decades.

Economic opportunity through trust

Micro-entrepreneurs need customers, mentors, and referrals more than pitch decks. Robust networks are the on-ramp. Mentorship within cooperative unions in Tanzania or producer groups in Colombia can stand in for formal incubators, while group purchasing lowers costs.

The trade-offs and blind spots

Community isn’t automatically inclusive. It can concentrate power and extract unpaid labor.

• Gatekeeping and conformity: Elders or leaders may control resources and punish dissent. Innovation can be stifled by tradition.

• Gendered burdens: Women often carry the invisible workload—organizing events, caregiving, fundraising—without equivalent decision power.

• Exclusion of outsiders: Migrants, minority faiths, and lower-caste or clan members may face hostile networks that deny them help or loans.

• Privacy and autonomy: Social surveillance can prevent abuse, but it can also limit personal freedom, especially for youth and LGBTQ+ people.

• Elite capture: Community-driven development funds can be hijacked when oversight is weak.

Acknowledging these costs is part of treating community as real capital. Every asset class has risk; this one requires safeguards.

Modernization is reshaping community wealth—not erasing it

Urbanization and digitalization change how people connect. They rarely dissolve networks; they rewire them.

• Mobile money and fintech link informal savings groups across distance, enabling diaspora contributions and real-time transparency.

• Social media organizes mutual aid faster but can amplify performative giving or fraud. Verification and local anchors matter.

• Migrant neighborhoods in global cities rebuild hometown associations with new governance rules, mixing informal trust with bylaws and bank accounts.

• Platform cooperatives and worker-owned delivery services attempt to reclaim value from gig work by centering community ownership.

The question isn’t whether community wealth survives modern life. It’s how institutions and markets can complement rather than cannibalize it.

Practical policy ideas that respect community as wealth

Governments and NGOs often swing between ignoring social capital and romanticizing it. A middle path treats it as a partner.

• Fund through groups people actually use

• Channel grants and low-cost loans via verified savings groups, cooperatives, and faith-based associations with transparent rules.

• Provide light-touch auditing and capacity building rather than heavy-handed directives.

• Co-finance with community

• Match community contributions for water systems, clinics, or schools on a sliding scale. Make contributions inclusive: labor and local materials count alongside cash.

• Protect communal land with clear governance

• Recognize customary tenure in law, map boundaries, and support conflict resolution bodies that include women and youth.

• Design cash transfers that respect obligations

• Unconditional or lightly conditional cash aligns with community networks. Avoid rules that penalize shared households or extended family care.

• Invest in connectors

• Support community organizers, cooperative development specialists, and paralegals who translate between bureaucracy and local practice. They are infrastructure.

• Measure what matters

• Add high-quality social capital modules to national surveys. Track volunteer rates, association membership, and neighbor trust—and publish the data locally.

• Guard against harm

• Require gender parity in community committees receiving public funds. Establish grievance channels outside local power structures.

How businesses can participate without extracting

• Partner with cooperatives and community enterprises for sourcing, with multi-year contracts that share risk and reward.

• Build products around group behavior: savings features for ROSCAs, layaway programs that support extended families, and fee structures that don’t penalize shared accounts.

• Share data responsibly with community organizations to improve planning—opt-in, anonymized, and reciprocal.

• Set local hiring and training targets in consultation with neighborhood councils, not just municipal offices.

When companies see community as an ally rather than a marketing angle, loyalty and resilience follow.

A simple toolkit to assess community wealth where you live

Whether you’re a planner, nonprofit leader, or curious resident, try this quick scan:

• Mapping: List the active associations within a 20-minute walk—savings groups, sports clubs, faith groups, parent associations, trade networks. Who joins, and who doesn’t?

• Flows: How do people raise money in a crisis? Track a recent fundraiser’s path: who organized, who gave, who benefited?

• Spaces: Identify trusted physical spaces—markets, clinics, community centers, stoops—where information and care circulate. Are they accessible to women, youth, and people with disabilities?

• Norms: What are the unwritten rules? Are they supportive or restrictive, and for whom?

• Trust: Ask a dozen neighbors the same two questions: “Who do you rely on?” and “Who relies on you?” Overlaps reveal your real safety net.

• Gaps: Who is consistently missing from meetings or benefits? Plan outreach with those groups as co-designers.

Repeat the scan annually. Community wealth grows when it’s seen, measured, and managed collectively.

Rethinking success

If wealth is the capacity to live a secure, meaningful life, cash and community are complements. Money buys speed and scale; social capital supplies precision and care. Many countries keep score in community because that’s where survival and dignity are negotiated daily. It’s not a rejection of markets or modernity. It’s a different balance sheet—one that recognizes a neighbor’s knock at the door as a dividend and a packed community hall as a strong balance sheet.

The lesson travels well. Cities with high incomes still suffer loneliness and fragility; villages with modest cash flow often outperform in solidarity and resilience. The smartest policies and enterprises borrow from both worlds: invest in incomes and institutions, and protect the networks that make those investments stick. Count what people can count on—each other—and you’ll get closer to the true measure of wealth.