Network-cycle motif participation is associated with individual and collective wealth in Honduran villages.

ABSTRACT: Geodesic cycles, or loops of nodes connected in a sequence within a network, are an important if under-studied network motif, and their prominence or deficiency is associated with both beneficial and detrimental properties in diverse kinds of networks. Here, we examine cycles formed by people's reports of informal borrowing/lending and friendship ties among 22,551 rural Hondurans (in 174 isolated villages), and we explore their association with personal and community wealth across two time points. We find that cycles of different lengths (i.e., 3 or 4 ties in a loop) constitute an over-represented motif, and their quantity is strongly associated with individual wealth, i.e., richer individuals are involved in more cycles. Furthermore, we introduce a new metric of cycle composition, defined

SUBMITTER: Shridhar SV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12307972 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature