The
Strange Disappearance of Civic America
by Robert D. Putnam
Volume 7, Issue 24. December 1, 1996
For the last
year or so, I have been wrestling with a difficult mystery. It is a classic
brainteaser, with a corpus delicti, a crime scene strewn with clues, and many
potential suspects. As in all good detective stories, however, some plausible
miscreants turn out to have impeccable alibis, and some important clues hint
at
portentous developments that occurred before the curtain rose.
The mystery concerns the strange disappearance of social capital and civic
engagement in America. By "social capital," I mean features of social life--networks,
norms, and trust--that enable participants to act together more effectively
to pursue
shared objectives. (Whether or not their shared goals are praiseworthy is,
of course,
entirely another matter.) I use the term "civic engagement" to refer to people's
connections with the life of their communities, not only with politics.
Although I am not yet sure that I have solved the mystery, I have assembled
evidence that clarifies what happened. An important clue, as we shall see,
involves
differences among generations. Americans who came of age during the Depression
and World War II have been far more deeply engaged in the life of their
communities than the generations that have followed them. The passing of this
"long
civic generation" appears to be an important proximate cause of the decline
of our
civic life. This discovery does not in itself crack the case, but when combined
with
other data it points strongly to one suspect against whom I shall presently
bring an
indictment.
Evidence for the decline of social capital and civic engagement comes from
a
number of independent sources. Surveys of average Americans in 1965, 1975,
and
1985, in which they recorded every single activity during a day--so-called
"time-budget" studies--indicate that since 1965 time spent on informal socializing
and
visiting is down (perhaps by one-quarter) and time devoted to clubs and
organizations is down even more sharply (by roughly half). Membership records
of
such diverse organizations as the PTA, the Elks club, the League of Women
Voters,
the Red Cross, labor unions, and even bowling leagues show that participation
in
many conventional voluntary associations has declined by roughly 25 percent
to 50
percent over the last two to three decades. Surveys show sharp declines in
many
measures of collective political participation, including attending a rally
or speech (off
36 percent between 1973 and 1993), attending a meeting on town or school affairs
(off 39 percent), or working for a political party (off 56 percent).
Some of the most reliable evidence about trends comes from the General Social
Survey (GSS), conducted nearly every year for more than two decades. The GSS
demonstrates, at all levels of education and among both men and women, a
drop of
roughly one-quarter in group membership since 1974 and a drop of roughly
one-third in social trust since 1972. (Trust in political authorities, indeed
in many
social institutions, has also declined sharply over the last three decades,
but that is
conceptually a distinct trend.) Slumping membership has afflicted all sorts
of groups,
from sports clubs and professional associations to literary discussion groups
and
labor unions. Only nationality groups, hobby and garden clubs, and the catch-all
category of "other" seem to have resisted the ebbing tide. Gallup polls report
that
church attendance fell by roughly 15 percent during the 1960s and has remained
at
that lower level ever since, while data from the National Opinion Research
Center
suggest that the decline continued during the 1970s and 1980s and by now amounts
to roughly 30 percent. A more complete audit of American social capital would
need to account for apparent countertrends. Some observers believe, for example,
that support groups and neighborhood watch groups are proliferating, and few
deny
that the last several decades have witnessed explosive growth in interest
groups
represented in Washington. The growth of such "mailing list" organizations
as the
American Association of Retired People and the Sierra Club, although highly
significant in political (and commercial) terms, is not really a counterexample
to the
supposed decline in social connectedness, however, since these are not really
associations in which members meet one another. Their members' ties are to
common symbols and ideologies, but not to each other. Similarly, although
most
secondary associations are not-for-profit, most prominent nonprofits (from
Harvard
University to the Ford Foundation to the Metropolitan Opera) are bureaucracies,
not secondary associations, so the growth of the "third sector" is not tantamount
to a
growth in social connectedness. With due regard to various kinds of
counterevidence, I believe that the weight of available evidence confirms
that
Americans today are significantly less engaged with their communities than
was true
a generation ago.
Of course, American civil society is not moribund. Many good people across
the
land work hard every day to keep their communities vital. Indeed, evidence
suggests
that America still outranks many other countries in the degree of our community
involvement and social trust. But if we examine our lives, not our aspirations,
and if
we compare ourselves not with other countries but with our parents, the best
available evidence suggests that we are less connected with one another.
Reversing this trend depends, at least in part, on understanding the causes
of the
strange malady afflicting American civic life. This is the mystery I seek
to unravel
here: Why, beginning in the 1960s and accelerating in the 1970s and 1980s,
did the
fabric of American community life begin to fray? Why are more Americans bowling
alone?
THE USUAL SUSPECTS
Many possible answers have been suggested for this puzzle:
busy-ness and time pressure;
economic hard times (or, according to alternative theories, material affluence);
residential mobility;
suburbanization;
the movement of women into the paid labor force and the stresses of
two-career families;
disruption of marriage and family ties;
changes in the structure of the American economy, such as the rise of chain
stores, branch firms, and the service sector;
the sixties (most of which actually happened in the seventies); including
Vietnam, Watergate, and disillusion with public life; and
the cultural revolt against authority (sex, drugs, and so on);
growth of the welfare state;
television, the electronic revolution, and other technological changes.
The classic questions posed by a detective are means, motive, and opportunity.
A
solution, even a partial one, to our mystery must pass analogous tests.
Is the proposed explanatory factor correlated with trust and civic
engagement? If not, that factor probably does not belong in the lineup. For
example, if working women turn out to be more engaged in community life than
housewives, it would be harder to attribute the downturn in community organizations
to the rise of two-career families.
Is the correlation spurious? If parents, for example, were more likely than
childless
people to be joiners, that might be an important clue. However, if the correlation
between parental status and civic engagement turned out to be entirely spurious,
due
to the effects of (say) age, we would have to remove the declining birth rate
from
our list of suspects.
Is the proposed explanatory factor changing in the relevant way? Suppose,
for
instance, that people who often move have shallower community roots. That
could
be an important part of the answer to our mystery only if residential mobility
itself
had risen during this period.
Is the proposed explanatory factor vulnerable to the claim that it might be
the
result of civic disengagement, not the cause? For example, even if newspaper
readership were closely correlated with civic engagement across individuals
and
across time, we would need to weigh the degree to which reduced newspaper
circulation is the result (not the cause) of disengagement.
Against those benchmarks, let us weigh the evidence. But first we must
acknowledge a trend that only complicates our task.
EDUCATION DEEPENS THE MYSTERY
Education is by far the strongest correlate that I have discovered of civic
engagement in all its forms, including social trust and membership in many
different
types of groups. In fact, the effects of education become greater and greater
as we
move up the educational ladder. The four years of education between 14 and
18
total years have ten times more impact on trust and membership than the first
four
years of formal education. This curvilinear pattern applies to both men and
women,
and to all races and generations.
Sorting out just why education has such a massive effect on social connectedness
would require a book in itself. Education is in part a proxy for social class
and
economic differences, but when income, social status, and education are used
together to predict trust and group membership, education continues to be
the
primary influence. So, well-educated people are much more likely to be joiners
and
trusters, partly because they are better off economically, but mostly because
of the
skills, resources, and inclinations that were imparted to them at home and
in school.
The expansion of high schools and colleges earlier this century has had an
enormous
impact on the educational composition of the adult population during just
the last two
decades. Since 1972 the proportion of adults with fewer than 12 years of education
has been cut in half, falling from 40 percent to 18 percent, while the proportion
with
more than 12 years has nearly doubled, rising from 28 percent to 50 percent,
as the
generation of Americans educated around the turn of this century (most of
whom did
not finish high school) died off and were replaced by the baby boomers and
their
successors (most of whom attended college).
So here we have two facts--education boosts civic engagement sharply, and
educational levels have risen massively--that only deepen our central mystery.
By
itself, the rise in educational levels should have increased social capital
during the last
20 years by 15-20 percent, even assuming that the effects of education were
merely
linear. (Taking account of the curvilinear effect in figure 1, "Education
and Civic
Life," the rise in trusting and joining should have been even greater, as
Americans
moved up the accelerating curve.) By contrast, however, the actual GSS figures
show a net decline since the early 1970s of roughly the same magnitude (trust
by
about 20-25 percent, memberships by about 15-20 percent). The relative declines
in social capital are similar within each educational category--roughly 25
percent in
group memberships and roughly 30 percent in social trust since the early 1970s,
and
probably even more since the early 1960s.
While this first investigative foray leaves us more mystified than before,
we may
nevertheless draw two useful conclusions. First, we need to take account of
educational differences in our exploration of other factors to be sure that
we do not
confuse their effects with the consequences of education. And, second, the
mysterious disengagement of the last quarter century seems to have afflicted
all
educational strata in our society, whether they have had graduate education
or did
not finish high school.
MOBILITY AND SUBURBANIZATION
Many studies have found that residential stability and such related phenomena
as
homeownership are associated with greater civic engagement. At an earlier
stage in
this investigation I observed that "mobility, like frequent re-potting of
plants, tends to
disrupt root systems, and it takes time for an uprooted individual to put
down new
roots." I must now report, however, that further inquiry fully exonerates
residential
mobility from any responsibility for our fading civic engagement.
Data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census 1995 (and earlier years) show that
rates
of residential mobility have been remarkably constant over the last half century.
In
fact, to the extent that there has been any change at all, both long-distance
and
short-distance mobility have declined over the last five decades. During the
1950s,
20 percent of Americans changed residence each year and 6.9 percent annually
moved across county borders; during the 1990s, the comparable figures are
17
percent and 6.6 percent. Americans, in short, are today slightly more rooted
residentially than a generation ago. The verdict on mobility is unequivocal:
This
theory is simply wrong.
But if moving itself has not eroded our social capital, what about the possibility
that
we have moved to places, especially suburbs, that are less congenial to social
connectedness? In fact, social connectedness does differ by community type,
but the
differences turn out to be modest and in directions that are inconsistent
with the
theory.
Controlling for such characteristics as education, age, income, work status,
and
race, citizens of the nation's 12 largest metropolitan areas (particularly
their central
cities, but also their suburbs) are roughly 10 percent less trusting and report
10-20
percent fewer group memberships than residents of other cities and towns (and
their
suburbs). Meanwhile, residents of very small towns and rural areas are (in
accord
with some hoary stereotypes) slightly more trusting and civicly engaged than
other
Americans. Unsurprisingly, the prominence of different types of groups does
vary
significantly by location: Major cities have more political and nationality
clubs;
smaller cities more fraternal, service, hobby, veterans', and church groups:
and rural
areas more agricultural organizations. But overall rates of associational
membership
are not very different.
Moreover, this pattern cannot account for our central puzzle. In the first
place, there
is virtually no correlation between gains in population and losses in social
capital,
either across states or across localities of different sizes. Even taking
into account the
educational and social backgrounds of those who have moved there, the suburbs
have faintly higher levels of trust and civic engagement than their respective
central
cities, which should have produced growth, not decay, in social capital over
the last
generation. The central point, however, is that the downtrends in trusting
and joining
are virtually identical everywhere--in cities, big and small, in suburbs,
in small towns,
and in the countryside.
Of course, Evanston is not Levittown is not Sun City. The evidence available
does
not allow us to determine whether different types of suburban living have
different
effects on civic connections and social trust. However, these data do rule
out the
thesis that suburbanization per se has caused the erosion of America's social
capital.
Both where we live and how long we've lived there matter for social capital,
but
neither explains why it is eroding everywhere.
PRESSURES OF TIME AND MONEY
Americans certainly feel busier now than a generation ago: The proportion
of us
who report feeling "always rushed" jumped by half between the mid-1960s and
the
mid-1990s. Probably the most obvious suspect behind our tendency to drop out
of
community affairs is pervasive busy-ness. And lurking nearby in the shadows
are
economic pressures so much discussed nowadays, from job insecurity to declining
real wages.
Yet, however culpable busy-ness and economic insecurity may appear at first
glance, it is hard to find incriminating evidence. In the first place, time-budget
studies
do not confirm the thesis that Americans are, on average, working longer than
a
generation ago. On the contrary, a new study by John Robinson and Geoffrey
Godbey of the University of Maryland reports a five hour per week gain in
free time
for the average American between 1965 and 1985, due partly to reduced time
spent
on housework and partly to earlier retirement. Their claim that Americans
have more
leisure time now than several decades ago is, to be sure, contested by other
observers, notably Juliet Schor, who in her 1991 book The Overworked American
reports evidence that work hours are lengthening, especially for women.
But whatever the resolution
of that controversy, other data call into question whether
longer hours at work lead to
lessened involvement in civic life or reduced social
trust. Results from
the GSS show that employed people belong to somewhat more
groups than those
outside the paid labor force. Even more striking is the fact that
among workers, longer
hours are linked to more civic engagement. The patterns
among men and women
on this score are not identical: Women who work part-time
appear to be somewhat
more civicly engaged and socially trusting than either those
who work full-time
or those who do not work outside the home at all--an intriguing
anomaly, though not
relevant to our basic puzzle, since female part-time workers
constitute a relatively
small fraction of the American population, and the fraction is
growing, up from
about 8 percent to about 10 percent between the early 1970s &
early 1990s.
But what do workaholics do less? Robinson reports that, unsurprisingly, people
who
spend more time at work do feel more rushed, and these harried souls do spend
less
time eating, sleeping, reading books, engaging in hobbies, and just doing
nothing.
Compared to the rest of the population, they also spend a lot less time watching
television, almost 30 percent less. However, they do not spend less time on
organizational activity. In short, those who work longer forego Nightline,
but not the
Kiwanis club; ER, but not the Red Cross.
So hard work does not prevent civic engagement. Moreover, the nationwide falloff
in joining and trusting is perfectly mirrored among full-time workers, among
part-time workers, and among those outside the paid labor force. So if people
are
dropping out of community life, long hours do not seem to be the reason.
If time pressure is not the culprit, how about financial pressures? It is
true that
people with lower incomes and those who feel financially strapped are somewhat
less engaged in community life and somewhat less trusting than those who are
better
off, even holding education constant. On the other hand, the downtrends in
social
trust and civic engagement are visible among people of all incomes, with no
sign
whatever that they are concentrated among those who have borne the brunt of
the
economic distress of the last two decades. Quite the contrary, the declines
in
engagement and trust are actually somewhat greater among the more affluent
segments of the American public than among the poor and middle-income
wage-earners. Moreover, personal financial satisfaction is wholly uncorrelated
with
civic engagement and social trust. In short, neither objective nor subjective
economic
well-being has inoculated Americans against the virus of civic disengagement;
if
anything, affluence has slightly exacerbated the problem. Poverty and economic
inequality are dreadful, growing problems for America, but they are not the
villains of
this piece.
THE CHANGING ROLE OF WOMEN
Most of our mothers were housewives, and most of them invested heavily in
social
capital formation--a jargony way of referring to untold unpaid hours in church
suppers, PTA meetings, neighborhood coffee klatches, and visits to friends
and
relatives. The movement of women out of the home and into the paid labor force
is
probably the most portentous social change of the last half century. However
welcome and overdue the feminist revolution may be, it is hard to believe
that it has
had no impact on social connectedness. Could this be the primary reason for
the
decline of social capital over the last generation?
Some patterns in the survey evidence seem to support this claim. All things
considered, women belong to somewhat fewer voluntary associations than men
do.
On the other hand, time-budget studies suggest that women spend more time
on
those groups and more time in informal social connecting than men. Although
the
absolute declines in joining and trusting are approximately equivalent among
men and
women, the relative declines are somewhat greater among women. Controlling
for
education, memberships among men have declined at a rate of about 10-15 percent
a decade, compared to about 20-25 percent a decade for women. The time-budget
data, too, strongly suggest that the decline in organizational involvement
in recent
years is concentrated among women. These sorts of facts, coupled with the
obvious
transformation in the professional role of women over this same period, led
me in
previous work to suppose that the emergence of two-career families might be
the
most important single factor in the erosion of social capital.
As we saw earlier, however, work status itself seems to have little net impact
on
group membership or on trust. Housewives belong to different types of groups
than
do working women (more PTAs, for example, and fewer professional associations),
but in the aggregate working women are actually members of slightly more voluntary
associations (though housewives, according to Robinson and Godbey, spend more
time on them). Moreover, the overall declines in civic engagement are somewhat
greater among housewives than among employed women. Comparison of
time-budget data between 1965 and 1985 seems to show that employed women as
a group are actually spending more time on organizations than before, while
housewives are spending less. This same study suggests that the major decline
in
informal socializing since 1965 has also been concentrated among housewives.
The
central fact, of course, is that the overall trends are down for all categories
of
women (and for men, too, even bachelors), but the figures suggest that women
who
work full-time actually may have been more resistant to the slump than those
who do
not.
Thus, although women appear to have borne a disproportionate share of the
decline
in civic engagement over the last two decades, it is not easy to find any
micro-level
data that tie that fact directly to their entry into the labor force. Of course,
women
who have chosen to enter the workforce doubtless differ in many respects from
women who have chosen to stay home. Perhaps one reason that community
involvement appears to be rising among working women and declining among
housewives is that precisely the sort of women who, in an earlier era, were
most
involved with their communities have been disproportionately likely to enter
the
workforce, thus lowering the average level of civic engagement among the remaining
homemakers and raising the average among women in the workplace.
No doubt the movement of women into the workplace over the last generation
has
changed the types of organizations to which they belong. Contrary to my own
earlier speculations, however, I can find little evidence to support the hypothesis
that
this movement has played a major role in the net reduction of social connectedness
and civic engagement. On the other hand, I have no clear alternative explanation
for
the fact that the relative declines are greater among women, both those who
work
outside the home and those who don't, than among men. Since this evidence
is at
best circumstantial, perhaps the best interim judgment here is the famous
Scots
verdict: not proven.
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
Another widely discussed social trend that more or less coincides with the
downturn
in civic engagement is the breakdown of the traditional family unit--mom,
dad, and
the kids. Since the family itself is, by some accounts, a key form of social
capital,
perhaps its eclipse is part of the explanation for the reduction in joining
and trusting
in the wider community. What does the evidence show?
First of all, evidence of the loosening of family bonds is unequivocal. In
addition to
the century-long increase in divorce rates (which accelerated from the mid-1960s
to
the mid-1970s and then leveled off), and the more recent increase in single-parent
families, the incidence of one-person households has more than doubled since
1950,
in part because of the rising number of widows living alone. The net effect
of all
these changes, as reflected in the General Social Survey, is that the proportion
of all
American adults currently unmarried climbed from 28 percent in 1974 to 48
percent
in 1994.
Second, married men and women do rank somewhat higher on both our measures
of social capital. That is, controlling for education, age, race, and so on,
single
people--both men and women, divorced, separated, and never married--are
significantly less trusting and less engaged civicly than married people.
(Multivariate
analysis hints that one major reason why divorce lowers connectedness is that
it
lowers family income, which in turn reduces civic engagement.) Roughly speaking,
married men and women are about a third more trusting and belong to about
15-25
percent more groups than comparable single men and women. (Widows and
widowers are more like married people than single people in this comparison.)
In short, successful marriage, especially if the family includes children,
is statistically
associated with greater social trust and civic engagement. Thus, some part
of the
decline in both trust and membership is tied to the decline in marriage. To
be sure,
the direction of causality behind this correlation may be complicated, since
it is
conceivable that loners and paranoids are harder to live with. If so, divorce
may in
some degree be the consequence, not the cause, of lower social capital. Probably
the most reasonable summary of these arrays of data, however, is that the
decline in
successful marriage is a significant, though modest part of the reason for
declining
trust and lower group membership. On the other hand, changes in family structure
cannot be a major part of our story, since the overall declines in joining
and trusting
are substantial even among the happily married. My own verdict (based in part
on
additional evidence to be introduced later) is that the disintegration of
marriage is
probably an accessory to the crime, but not the major villain of the piece.
THE RISE OF THE WELFARE STATE
Circumstantial evidence, particularly the timing of the downturn in social
connectedness, has suggested to some observers that an important cause--perhaps
even the cause--is big government and the growth of the welfare state. By
"crowding out" private initiative, it is argued, state intervention has subverted
civil
society.
Some government policies have almost certainly had the effect of destroying
social
capital. For example, the so-called "slum clearance" policies of the 1950s
and 1960s
replaced physical capital, but destroyed social capital, by disrupting existing
community ties. It is also conceivable that certain social expenditures and
tax policies
may have created disincentives for civic-minded philanthropy. On the other
hand, it
is much harder to see which government policies might be responsible for the
decline
in bowling leagues and literary clubs. Some community institutions sponsored,
organized, or subsidized by government, such as National Service, agricultural
extension programs, and Head Start, may enhance trust and social capital.
Which
effect prevails needs to be resolved with evidence, not ideology.
One empirical approach to this issue is to examine differences in civic engagement
and public policy across different political jurisdictions to see whether
enlarged
government leads to shriveled social capital. Among the U.S. states, however,
differences in social capital appear essentially uncorrelated with various
measures of
welfare spending or government size. Citizens in free-spending states are
no less
trusting or engaged than citizens in frugal ones.
Cross-national comparison can also shed light on this question. Among nineteen
member countries of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) for which data on social trust and group membership are available from
the
1990-1991 World Values Survey, these indicators of social capital are, if
anything,
positively correlated with the size of the state. This simple bivariate analysis,
of
course, cannot tell us whether social connectedness encourages welfare spending,
whether the welfare state fosters civic engagement, or whether both are the
result of
some other unmeasured factor(s). Even this simple finding, however, is not
easily
reconciled with the notion that big government undermines social capital.
GENERATIONAL EFFECTS
Our efforts thus far to identify the major sources of civic disengagement
have been
singularly unfruitful. In all our statistical analyses, however, one factor,
second only
to education, stands out as a predictor of all forms of civic engagement and
trust.
That factor is age. Older people belong to more organizations than young people,
and they are less misanthropic. Older Americans also vote more often and read
newspapers more frequently, two other forms of civic engagement closely correlated
with joining and trusting.
"Civic Engagement by Age" shows the basic pattern. Civic involvement appears
to
rise more or less steadily from early adulthood toward a plateau in middle
age, from
which it declines only late in life. This humpback pattern seems naturally
to represent
the arc of life's engagements. That, at least, was how I first interpreted
the data. But
that would be a fundamental misreading of the most important clue in our whole
whodunit.
Evidence from the General Social Survey enables us to follow individual cohorts
as
they age. If the rising lines in the figure indeed represent deepening civic
engagement
with age, we should be able to track this same deepening engagement as we
follow,
for example, the first of the baby boomers, born in 1947, as they aged from
25 in
1972 (the first year of the GSS) to 47 in 1994 (the latest year available).
Startlingly,
however, such an analysis, repeated for successive birth cohorts, produces
virtually
no evidence of such life cycle changes in civic engagement. In fact, as various
generations moved through the period between 1972 and 1994, their levels of
trust
and membership more often fell than rose, reflecting a more or less simultaneous
decline in civic engagement among young and old alike, particularly during
the
second half of the 1980s. But that downtrend obviously cannot explain why,
throughout the period, older Americans were always more trusting and engaged.
In
fact, the only reliable life cycle effect visible in these data is a withdrawal
from civic
engagement very late in life, as we move through our eighties.
The central paradox posed by these patterns is this: Older people are consistently
more engaged and trusting than younger people, yet we do not become more
engaged and trusting as we age. What's going on here?
Time and age are notoriously ambiguous in their effects on social behavior.
Social
scientists have learned to distinguish three contrasting phenomena:
Life cycle effects represent differences attributable to stage of life. In
this case
individuals change as they age, but since the effects of aging are, in the
aggregate,
neatly balanced by the "demographic metabolism" of births and deaths, life
cycle
effects produce no aggregate change. Everyone's close-focus eyesight worsens
as
we age, but the aggregate demand for reading glasses changes little.
Period effects affect all people who live through a given era, regardless
of their age.
Period effects can produce both individual and aggregate change, often quickly
and
enduringly, without any age-related differences. The sharp drop in trust in
government between 1965 and 1975, for example, was almost entirely this sort
of
period effect, as Americans of all ages changed their minds about their leaders'
trustworthiness. Similarly, as just noted, a modest portion of the decline
in social
capital during the 1980s appears to be a period effect.
Generational effects affect all people born at the same time. Like life cycle
effects
(and unlike typical period effects), generational effects show up as disparities
among
age groups at a single point in time, but like period effects (and unlike
life cycle
effects) generational effects produce real social change, as successive generations,
enduringly "imprinted" with divergent outlooks, enter and leave the population.
In
pure generational effects, no individual ever changes, but society does.
Returning to our conundrum, how could older people today be more engaged and
trusting, if they did not become more engaged and trusting as they aged? The
key to
this paradox, as David Butler and Donald Stokes observed in another context,
is to
ask, not how old people are, but when they were young. The figure "Social
Capital and Civic Engagement by Generation," addresses this reformulated question,
displaying various measures of civic engagement according to the respondents'
year
of birth.
By any standard, these intergenerational differences are extraordinary. Compare,
for
example, the generation born in the early 1920s with the generation of their
grandchildren born in the late 1960s. Controlling for educational disparities,
members of the generation born in the 1920s belong to almost twice as many
civic
associations as those born in the late 1960s (roughly 1.9 memberships per
capita,
compared to roughly 1.1 memberships per capita). The grandparents are more
than
twice as likely to trust other people (50-60 percent compared with 25 percent
for
the grandchildren). They vote at nearly double the rate of the most recent
cohorts
(roughly 75 percent compared with 40-45 percent), and they read newspapers
almost three times as often (70-80 percent read a paper daily compared with
25-30
percent). And bear in mind that we have found no evidence that the youngest
generation will come to match their grandparents' higher levels of civic engagement
as they grow older.
Thus, read not as life cycle effects, but rather as generational effects,
the age-related
patterns in our data suggest a radically different interpretation of our basic
puzzle.
Deciphered with this key, the figure on page 43 depicts a long "civic" generation,
born roughly between 1910 and 1940, a broad group of people substantially
more
engaged in community affairs and substantially more trusting than those younger
than
they. (Members of the 1910-1940 generation also seem more civic than their
elders,
at least to judge by the outlooks of relatively few men and women born in
the late
nineteenth century who appeared in our samples.) The culminating point of
this civic
generation is the cohort born in 1925-1930, who attended grade school during
the
Great Depression, spent World War II in high school (or on the battlefield),
first
voted in 1948 or 1952, set up housekeeping in the 1950s, and watched their
first
television when they were in their late twenties. Since national surveying
began, this
cohort has been exceptionally civic: voting more, joining more, reading newspapers
more, trusting more. As the distinguished sociologist Charles Tilly (born
in 1928)
said in commenting on an early version of this essay, "We are the last suckers."
In short, the most parsimonious interpretation of the age-related differences
in civic
engagement is that they represent a powerful reduction in civic engagement
among
Americans who came of age in the decades after World War II, as well as some
modest additional disengagement that affected all cohorts during the 1980s.
These
patterns hint that being raised after World War II was a quite different experience
from being raised before that watershed. It is as though the postwar generations
were exposed to some mysterious X-ray that permanently and increasingly rendered
them less likely to connect with the community. Whatever that force might
have
been, it--rather than anything that happened during the 1970s and 1980s--accounts
for most of the civic disengagement that lies at the core of our mystery.
But if this reinterpretation of our puzzle is correct, why did it take so
long for the
effects of that mysterious X-ray to become manifest? If the underlying causes
of
civic disengagement can be traced to the 1940s and 1950s, why did the effects
become conspicuous in PTA meetings and Masonic lodges, in the volunteer lists
of
the Red Cross and the Boy Scouts, and in polling stations and church pews
and
bowling alleys across the land only during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s?
The visible effects of this generational disengagement were delayed by two
important
factors. First, the postwar boom in college enrollments raised levels of civic
engagement, offsetting the generational trends. As Warren E. Miller and J.
Merrill
Shanks observe in their as yet unpublished book, The American Voter
Reconsidered, the postwar expansion of educational opportunities "forestalled
a
cataclysmic drop" in voting turnout, and it had a similar delaying effect
on civic
disengagement more generally.
In short, the very decades that have seen a national deterioration in social
capital are
the same decades during which the numerical dominance of a trusting and civic
generation has been replaced by the dominion of "post-civic" cohorts. Moreover,
although the long civic generation has enjoyed unprecedented life expectancy,
allowing its members to contribute more than their share to American social
capital
in recent decades, they are now passing from the scene. Even the youngest
members
of that generation will reach retirement age within the next few years. Thus,
a
generational analysis leads almost inevitably to the conclusion that the national
slump
in trust and engagement is likely to continue, regardless of whether the more
modest
"period effect" depression of the 1980s continues.
OUR PRIME SUSPECT
To say that civic disengagement in contemporary America is in large measure
generational merely reformulates our central puzzle. We now know that much
of the
cause of our lonely bowling probably dates to the 1940s and 1950s, rather
than to
the 1960s and 1970s. What could have been the mysterious anticivic "X-ray"
that
affected Americans who came of age after World War II and whose effects
progressively deepened at least into the 1970s?
Our new formulation of the puzzle opens the possibility that the zeitgeist
of national
unity, patriotism, and shared sacrifice that culminated in 1945 might have
reinforced
civic-mindedness. On the other hand, it is hard to assign any consistent role
to the
Cold War and the Bomb, since the anticivic trend appears to have deepened
steadily from the 1940s to the 1970s, in no obvious harmony with the rhythms
of
world affairs. Nor is it easy to construct an interpretation of the data on
generational
differences in which the cultural vicissitudes of the sixties could play a
significant role.
Neither can economic adversity or affluence easily be tied to the generational
decline
in civic engagement, since the slump seems to have affected in equal measure
those
who came of age in the placid fifties, the booming sixties, and the busted
seventies.
I have discovered only one prominent suspect against whom circumstantial evidence
can be mounted, and in this case, it turns out, some directly incriminating
evidence
has also turned up. This is not the occasion to lay out the full case for
the
prosecution, nor to review rebuttal evidence for the defense, but I want to
present
evidence that justifies indictment.
The culprit is television.
First, the timing fits. The long civic generation was the last cohort of Americans
to
grow up without television, for television flashed into American society like
lightning
in the 1950s. In 1950 barely 10 percent of American homes had television sets,
but
by 1959, 90 percent did, probably the fastest diffusion of a major technological
innovation ever recorded. The reverberations from this lightning bolt continued
for
decades, as viewing hours grew by 17-20 percent during the 1960s and by an
additional 7-8 percent during the 1970s. In the early years, TV watching was
concentrated among the less educated sectors of the population, but during
the
1970s the viewing time of the more educated sectors of the population began
to
converge upward. Television viewing increases with age, particularly upon
retirement, but each generation since the introduction of television has begun
its life
cycle at a higher starting point. By 1995 viewing per TV household was more
than
50 percent higher than it had been in the 1950s.
Most studies estimate that the average American now watches roughly four hours
per day (excluding periods in which television is merely playing in the background).
Even a more conservative estimate of three hours means that television absorbs
40
percent of the average American's free time, an increase of about one-third
since
1965. Moreover, multiple sets have proliferated: By the late 1980s three-quarters
of
all U.S. homes had more than one set, and these numbers too are rising steadily,
allowing ever more private viewing. Robinson and Godbey are surely right to
conclude that "television is the 800-pound gorilla of leisure time." This
massive
change in the way Americans spend their days and nights occurred precisely
during
the years of generational civic disengagement.
Evidence of a link between the arrival of television and the erosion of
social
connections is, however, not merely circumstantial. The links between civic
engagement and television viewing can be instructively compared with the links
between civic engagement and newspaper reading. The basic contrast is
straightforward: Newspaper reading is associated with high social capital,
TV
viewing with low social capital.
Controlling for education, income, age, race, place of residence, work status,
and
gender, TV viewing is strongly and negatively related to social trust and
group
membership, whereas the same correlations with newspaper reading are positive.
Within every educational category, heavy readers are avid joiners, whereas
heavy
viewers are more likely to be loners. In fact, more detailed analysis suggests
that
heavy TV watching is one important reason why less educated people are less
engaged in the life of their communities. Controlling for differential TV
exposure
significantly reduces the correlation between education and engagement.
Viewing and reading are themselves uncorrelated--some people do lots of both,
some do little of either--but "pure readers" (that is, people who watch less
TV than
average and read more newspapers than average) belong to 76 percent more civic
organizations than "pure viewers" (controlling for education, as always).
Precisely the
same pattern applies to other indicators of civic engagement, including social
trust
and voting turnout. "Pure readers," for example, are 55 percent more trusting
than
"pure viewers."
In other words, each hour spent viewing television is associated with less
social trust
and less group membership, while each hour reading a newspaper is associated
with
more. An increase in television viewing of the magnitude that the U.S. has
experienced in the last four decades might directly account for as much as
one-quarter to one- half of the total drop in social capital, even without
taking into
account, for example, the indirect effects of television viewing on newspaper
readership or the cumulative effects of lifetime viewing hours. Newspaper
circulation
(per household) has dropped by more than half since its peak in 1947. To be
sure, it
is not clear which way the tie between newspaper reading and civic involvement
works, since disengagement might itself dampen one's interest in community
news.
But the two trends are clearly linked.
HOW MIGHT TV DESTROY SOCIAL CAPITAL?
Time displacement. Even though there are only 24 hours in everyone's
day, most
forms of social and media participation are positively correlated. People
who listen
to lots of classical music are more likely, not less likely, than others to
attend Cubs
games. Television is the principal exception to this generalization--the only
leisure
activity that seems to inhibit participation outside the home. TV watching
comes at
the expense of nearly every social activity outside the home, especially social
gatherings and informal conversations. TV viewers are homebodies.
Most studies that report a negative correlation between television watching
and
community involvement (see figure "The TV Connection") are ambiguous with
respect to causality, because they merely compare different individuals at
a single
time. However, one important quasi-experimental study of the introduction
of
television in three Canadian towns found the same pattern at the aggregate
level
across time. A major effect of television's arrival was the reduction in participation
in
social, recreational, and community activities among people of all ages. In
short,
television privatizes our leisure time.
Effects on the outlooks of viewers. An impressive body of literature
suggests that
heavy watchers of TV are unusually skeptical about the benevolence of other
people--overestimating crime rates, for example. This body of literature has
generated much debate about the underlying causal patterns, with skeptics
suggesting that misanthropy may foster couch-potato behavior rather than the
reverse. While awaiting better experimental evidence, however, a reasonable
interim
judgment is that heavy television watching may well increase pessimism about
human
nature. Perhaps too, as social critics have long argued, both the medium and
the
message have more basic effects on our ways of interacting with the world
and with
one another. Television may induce passivity, as Neil Postman has claimed.
Effects on children. TV consumes an extraordinary part of children's
lives, about
40 hours per week on average. Viewing is especially high among pre-adolescents,
but it remains high among younger adolescents: Time-budget studies suggest
that
among youngsters aged 9 to 14 television consumes as much time as all other
discretionary activities combined, including playing, hobbies, clubs, outdoor
activities, informal visiting, and just hanging out. The effects of television
on
childhood socialization have, of course, been hotly debated for more than
three
decades. The most reasonable conclusion from a welter of sometimes conflicting
results appears to be that heavy television watching probably increases
aggressiveness (although perhaps not actual violence), that it probably reduces
school achievement, and that it is statistically associated with "psychosocial
malfunctioning," although how much of this effect is self-selection and how
much
causal remains much debated. The evidence is, as I have said, not yet enough
to
convict, but the defense has a lot of explaining to do.
More than two decades ago, just as the first signs of disengagement were beginning
to appear in American politics, the political scientist Ithiel de Sola Pool
observed
that the central issue would be--it was then too soon to judge, as he rightly
noted--whether the development represented a temporary change in the weather
or
a more enduring change in the climate. It now appears that much of the change
whose initial signs he spotted did in fact reflect a climatic shift.
Moreover, just as the erosion of the ozone layer was detected only many years
after
the proliferation of the chlorofluorocarbons that caused it, so too the erosion
of
America's social capital became visible only several decades after the underlying
process had begun. Like Minerva's owl that flies at dusk, we come to appreciate
how important the long civic generation has been to American community life
just as
its members are retiring. Unless America experiences a dramatic upward boost
in
civic engagement (a favorable "period effect") in the next few years, Americans
in
2010 will join, trust, and vote even less than we do today.
In an astonishingly prescient book, Technologies without Borders, published
in
1991 after his death, Pool concluded that the electronic revolution in
communications technology was the first major technological advance in centuries
that would have a profoundly decentralizing and fragmenting effect on society
and
culture. He hoped that the result might be "community without contiguity."
As a
classic liberal, he welcomed the benefits of technological change for individual
freedom, and in part, I share that enthusiasm. Those of us who bemoan the
decline
of community in contemporary America need to be sensitive to the liberating
gains
achieved during the same decades. We need to avoid an uncritical nostalgia
for the
fifties. On the other hand, some of the same freedom-friendly technologies
whose
rise Pool predicted may indeed be undermining our connections with one another
and with our communities. Pool defended what he called "soft technological
determinism" because he recognized that social values cans condition the effects
of
technology. This perspective invites us not merely to consider how technology
is
privatizing our lives--if, as it seems to me, it is--but to ask whether we
like the result,
and if not, what we might do about it. Those are questions we should, of course,
be
asking together, not alone.