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The Boston Globe had a stunning article this weekend -The Downside of Diversity.
IT HAS BECOME increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.
But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam — famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000 book on declining civic engagement — has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.
“The extent of the effect is shocking,” says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist.
The study comes at a time when the future of the American melting pot is the focus of intense political debate, from immigration to race-based admissions to schools, and it poses challenges to advocates on all sides of the issues. The study is already being cited by some conservatives as proof of the harm large-scale immigration causes to the nation’s social fabric. But with demographic trends already pushing the nation inexorably toward greater diversity, the real question may yet lie ahead: how to handle the unsettling social changes that Putnam’s research predicts. ….
… His findings on the downsides of diversity have also posed a challenge for Putnam, a liberal academic whose own values put him squarely in the pro-diversity camp. Suddenly finding himself the bearer of bad news, Putnam has struggled with how to present his work. He gathered the initial raw data in 2000 and issued a press release the following year outlining the results. He then spent several years testing other possible explanations.
When he finally published a detailed scholarly analysis in June in the journal Scandinavian Political Studies, he faced criticism for straying from data into advocacy. His paper argues strongly that the negative effects of diversity can be remedied, and says history suggests that ethnic diversity may eventually fade as a sharp line of social demarcation. …
… “It’s an important addition to a growing body of evidence on the challenges created by diversity,” says Harvard economist Edward Glaeser.
In a recent study, Glaeser and colleague Alberto Alesina demonstrated that roughly half the difference in social welfare spending between the US and Europe — Europe spends far more — can be attributed to the greater ethnic diversity of the US population. Glaeser says lower national social welfare spending in the US is a “macro” version of the decreased civic engagement Putnam found in more diverse communities within the country.
Economists Matthew Kahn of UCLA and Dora Costa of MIT reviewed 15 recent studies in a 2003 paper, all of which linked diversity with lower levels of social capital. Greater ethnic diversity was linked, for example, to lower school funding, census response rates, and trust in others. Kahn and Costa’s own research documented higher desertion rates in the Civil War among Union Army soldiers serving in companies whose soldiers varied more by age, occupation, and birthplace.
Birds of different feathers may sometimes flock together, but they are also less likely to look out for one another. “Everyone is a little self-conscious that this is not politically correct stuff,” says Kahn. …
… So how to explain New York, London, Rio de Janiero, Los Angeles — the great melting-pot cities that drive the world’s creative and financial economies?
The image of civic lassitude dragging down more diverse communities is at odds with the vigor often associated with urban centers, where ethnic diversity is greatest. It turns out there is a flip side to the discomfort diversity can cause. If ethnic diversity, at least in the short run, is a liability for social connectedness, a parallel line of emerging research suggests it can be a big asset when it comes to driving productivity and innovation. In high-skill workplace settings, says Scott Page, the University of Michigan political scientist, the different ways of thinking among people from different cultures can be a boon.
“Because they see the world and think about the world differently than you, that’s challenging,” says Page, author of “The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies.” “But by hanging out with people different than you, you’re likely to get more insights. Diverse teams tend to be more productive.” …
John Fund with an overview of the GOP in Congress.
Republicans faced a time for choosing last week, when Senate Democrats brought to the floor an ethics “reform” bill that may make it easier for Congress to dole out pork-barrel spending. In the words of GOP Sen. Tom Coburn, the bill “not only failed to drain the swamp, but gave the alligators new rights.”
Rather than block the legislation and insist on better reforms, image-sensitive Republicans largely backed the bill.
Have they learned anything? They lost control of Congress last year in no small measure because the GOP had become identified with the culture of pork-barrel spending, frittering away the American people’s former confidence in them on fiscal issues.
If 34 Senate Republicans had united and voted against the bill, Democrats would have been forced to draw up more meaningful reforms. They might even have forced Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to accept the very “sunshine” provisions the Senate unanimously adopted in January–so at least the public would know who is doling out pork. But when it came down to it, only 17 voted for prolonging debate on the bill. …
Mr. Fund also has words for the Dems in debate.
Seven Democratic presidential candidates squared off last night in front of 15,000 AFL-CIO union members at Chicago’s Soldier Field stadium. Talk about playing to the audience. There was so much obeisance paid to the agenda of U.S. labor unions, every candidate should have been given a “pander bear” at the end as a prize.
“This is no longer Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party on trade issues,” concluded former California Democratic Party chairman Bill Press on MSNBC. “I predict that soon enough Bill Clinton himself will say we have to renegotiate NAFTA, a signature accomplishment of his first term.”
No kidding. Hillary Clinton for her part wasted little time bashing the North American Free Trade Agreement for allegedly hurting workers. …
John Stossel thinks it’s a good idea for Wisconsin to bankrupt itself with universal health care. Then the rest of us can learn from their misery.
… As usual, most of the new taxes will be imposed on employers. Progressives believe money taken from them doesn’t cost anything. Rich corporations will simply waste less on lavish perks and excess profits. But taxes on business are often paid by workers, stockholders and consumers. Businesses that can’t pass the taxes on to someone else will close or move out of state.
But progressives are oblivious to this fact. They see Wisconsin becoming a fairyland of health happiness supervised by the 16-person “authority” that will oversee the plan. Socialism will work this time because the “right” people will be in charge.
Does it never occur to the progressives that the legislature’s intrusion into private contracts is one reason health care and health insurance are expensive now? The average annual health-insurance premium for a family in Wisconsin is $4,462 partly because Wisconsin imposes 29 mandates on health insurers: Every policy must cover chiropractors, dentists, genetic testing, etc. Think chiropractors are quacks? Too bad. You still must pay them to treat people in your state. …
… That’s why America needs “Healthy Wisconsin.” The fall of the Soviet Union deprived us of the biggest example of how socialism works. We need laboratories of failure to demonstrate what socialism is like. All we have now is Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, the U.S. Post Office, and state motor-vehicle departments.
It’s not enough. Wisconsin can show the other 49 states what “universal” coverage is like.
I feel bad for the people in Wisconsin. They already suffer from little job creation, and the Packers aren’t winning, but it’s better to experiment with one state than all of America.
Don Boudreaux uses his column to examine the “progressives” claim to progress.
My son, Thomas, 10, sometimes amuses himself with a game he calls “Opposite.” Whenever he is struck by the fancy to play this game, he announces to my wife and me that all that he says during the next several minutes will be the opposite of what he really means.
“Mommy is ugly” really means “Mommy is beautiful.” “I’m stuffed!” means “I’m hungry.” To indicate that he’d prefer to play rather than do his homework, Thomas declares that, by all means, he wants to do his homework immediately.
Too often when I read newspapers or encounter government in action I feel as though pundits and politicians are playing “Opposite” with me. Except, unlike with my son, these people genuinely hope to dupe me with their verbal stratagems.
An especially galling “Opposite” in the political sphere is the use of the term “Progressive.” Enemies of individual freedom and responsibility, and of the economic dynamism characteristic only of capitalism, routinely call themselves “Progressives.”
These “Progressives” want America to “progress” back to a state of mind that holds that we ordinary men and women are so naturally weak in mind, body and willpower that we must be protected by heroic white knights from nefarious forces intent on destroying us.
Just as feudal lords protected their serfs from being raped and pillaged by invading hordes, so, too, will the modern state protect us helpless and ignorant ordinary folk from unsafe foods, immoral drugs, blackhearted corporations, naughty words and inexpensive foreign products. …