Social capital can alleviate youthful stressors that predict poor adult health

Flickr/meganskelly

Just finished a very interesting New Yorker article entitled “The Poverty Clinic” by Paul Tough that focuses on Nadine Burke who runs a San Francisco-based low-income health clinic and her conviction, supported by various studies, that youth trauma scars young people’s health for life.

They cite the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study of 1998 that showed that adults’ retrospective childhood ACE memories were a strong predictor of all kinds of negative adult health outcomes and this exhibited a dose-response linearity — i.e., exposure to more categories of childhood adversity meant both greater likelihood of negative adolescent outcomes (depression, suicide, binge drinking, etc.) and greater likelihood of poor adult health outcomes.

These ACEs measure youth stress in four areas: 1) physical; 2) sexual; 3) psychological; 4) substance abuse; 5) mental illness; and 6) criminal activity.  Actual list of items appended to this post.

While it is possible that these retrospective memories are flawed (i.e., sick adults are more likely to recall childhood stresses), a basically prospective New Zealand Dunedin study is finding the same thing for early trauma.  And Bruce McEwen (Rockefeller Univ.) and Frances Champagne (Columbia Univ.) have shown that “repeated, full-scale activation of this stress system, especially in early childhood…actually alerts the chemistry of DNA in the brain, through a process called methylation….This process disables these genes [methyl groups], preventing the brain from properly regulating its response to stress.”  Even a decade or more after the stress, these teenagers find it harder to sit still, exhibit higher rates of aggression, show weaker brain function, and can’t as adequately distinguish between real and imaginary threats.

While some doctors are looking at whether drugs (psychopharmacology) could have an impact, social capital can often overcome these stressors.

“Other researchers have produced evidence that they can mend children’s overtaxed stress-response systems by changing the behavior of their parents or caregivers.  A study in Oregon drew this conclusion after assessing a program that encouraged foster parents to be more responsive to the emotional cues of the children in their care.  Another study, in Delaware, tracked a program that promoted secure emotional attachment between children and their foster parents.  In each study, researchers measured, at various points in the day, the children’s level of cortisol, the main stress hormone, and then compared these cortisol patterns with those of a control group of foster kids whose parents weren’t in the program.  In both studies, the children whose foster parents received the intervention subsequently showed cortisol patterns that echoed those of children brought up in stable homes.

“In terms of helping older children and adolescents who have experienced early trauma, the research is less solid.  There is evidence that certain psychological regimens, especially cognitive-behavioral therapy, can reduce anxiety and depression in patients who are suffering from the stress of early trauma.  But, beyond that, little is known…”

Kaiser Permanente started asking about these stressors on intake questionnaires, since the were markers of health problems in the same way as say high cholesterol was.  The article points out that eliminating the negative effects of four ACEs would lower the risk of heart attacks as much as lowering cholesterol below the warning threshold.

With regard to work we are currently doing on a growing social class gap among adolescent youth, it is possible that methylation and ACEs might help explain lingering and persistent growing social class gaps that we see among high schoolers over the last several decades.

Read “The Poverty Clinic” (New Yorker, March 21, 2011)

See earlier post “Doctors Prescribing Social Capital“

See early article on Childhood stressors and adult health: Felitti VJ, Anda RF, Nordenberg D, Williamson DF, Spitz AM, Edwards V, Koss MP, et al JS. The relationship of adult health status to childhood abuse and household dysfunction. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 1998;14:245-258.

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Specifically ACE questionnaire asks whether:  parent or other adult in household (HH) often or very often swore at you, insulted you or put you down; often or very often acted in way that made you afraid that you would be physically hurt;  often or very often pushed, grabbed, shoved, or slapped you; often or very often hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured; person five+ years older than you ever touched or fondled you in a sexual way; had you touch their body in a sexual way; attempted oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you; actually had oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you; whether you lived with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic; lived with anyone who used street drugs; whether anyone in HH was depressed or mentally ill; whether HH member attempted suicide; whether your mother was treated violently ; whether your mother or stepmother was sometimes, often, or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her; whether mother/stepmother was sometimes, often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard; whether mother/stepmother was ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes; whether mother/stepmother was ever threatened with, or hurt by, a knife or gun; whether HH member ever went to prison.

Gen X-ers increasingly civicly engaged?

The Longitudinal Study of American Youth at University of Michigan has issued a new report “The Generation X Report: Active, Balanced, and Happy: These young Americans are not bowling alone“, whose conclusions are evident from its title.

Data they use: the LSAY began in 1987 with a national sample of 7th and 10th grade students in 50 U.S. public school systems; these 5,900 students were tracked for 6 years.  Then 95% of them were relocated in 2007 and interviewing has resumed annually for the last 4 years. Survey participants are now 36 and 39 years old.

Some of their evidence:

“One in three Generation X young adults is an active member of a church or religious organization and almost all of these young adults report attending one or more church or religious activities or events each week.  Thirty percent of Generation X young adults indicated that they are active members of a professional, business, or union organization, which provides additional opportunities for social interactions. Seventeen percent of all LSAY young adults are active members of a parent-teacher organization and 24% of the parents of minor children indicated that they are active in a school-based parent-teacher organization. Seventeen percent of Generation X young adult say that they are active in one or more community service groups and 29% report that they do some hours of volunteer work in their community each month. Four percent were active members of a book group and 3% indicated that they were active members of an environmental group….

The young adults in Generation X maintain an active social network outside formal groups and organizations. Ninety-five percent of LSAY young adults report that they talk to friends or family by telephone at least once each week and 29% say that they talk to friends or family on the phone once a day. Ten percent indicate that they have at least two telephone conversations with friends or family each day. Slightly more than 80% of young adults report visiting a friend or relative each week and 29% say that they make three of more visits to friends or family each week. Clearly, these young adults are engaged in continuous communication and interaction with other members of their family and their social network.

One of Putnam’s indicators of social capital was the frequency of inviting friends into one’s home for dinner, and he found this kind of social interaction to be diminishing. Generation X young adults in the LSAY report a substantial level of social interaction over food. Two-thirds reported that they entertain friends for dinner in their home or engage in group cooking activities with other adults at least once each month and 35% say that they entertain or participate in group cooking two or more times each month.

We have written about how the generation below Gen-X (those in their late 20s) are more engaged now than a generation ago (See Sander-Putnam “Still Bowling Alone“). As the scholars involved in LSAY surely know, there is no way just by looking at the levels of engagement of a group at a specific period of time to sort out how much of this is age (activities that people do more at certain ages than others), cohort (what is distinctive about, say GenXers), and period (what is distinctive about a specific period in history, say the Great Recession).  To sort out these age-period-cohort effects one needs to either compare people at the same age over time (say interviewing high school seniors every year for 30 years and seeing how high-school seniors are different now than high-school seniors 30 years ago) or having cross-sections of the US at multiple points in time so you can have multiple points for different birth cohorts at different ages.  Without this, it is somewhat like a Rohrshach pattern to observe GenXers today and opine about whether they are or not engaged.

Many of the activities they focus on (home entertaining or church attendance or PTA involvement) peak in the middle years as parents are trying to introduce their kids to religion or getting involved through schools.

That said, I hope their conclusion is correct, much as I’d need to see different evidence to believe it.

Read the LSAY report here.

Youth civic engagement, growing polarization and class divide

Flickr photo by mjm

Robert Putnam (in Australia) discussed American Grace, the recent rise in youth civic engagement, and both growing polarization and a growing class divide.  Excerpt from story in The Australian:

Putnam also sees a break in the downward trend in social capital, with the generation that became adults after September 11, 2001, more civic minded than older Americans. “9/11 had a big impact on these kids,” he says. “The attitude was that we are all in this together. There were Mexican waiters, Irish firemen, Jewish bankers involved.” On this reading, it was a disaster that drew people together, as did World War II and the Depression with earlier generations, although whether it has a long-term effect may be open to question.  [For more on this youth civic up-tick, see "Still Bowling Alone?"]

But Putnam worries about two other trends: political segregation and an increasing class divide. “Growing political polarization quite frankly is a damnable problem,” he says. “It is almost impossible in America to have an adult conversation about any issue like healthcare. People revert almost instinctively to very shortsighted partisanship.” He sees the decline in social capital as a contributing factor. Fewer people are brought together by mutual interests, irrespective of their different perspectives. “You didn’t choose your bowling partner to make sure your politics fitted their politics.”

Putnam says there are other reasons for what he describes in an ABC interview as the echo chamber that political discourse has become, including changes in the media. But the effect is that “ordinary Americans are more and more disconnected from personal networks that would help them interpret what is happening politically and enable them to share ideas. More and more we are stuck in this kind of strange echo chamber in which we send our views to the world and we hear back this crazy echo from other people who don’t actually know.”…

His second concern is based on research that has identified an increasing class division. Despite greater integration along religious and racial lines, there is an opposite trend when it comes to class, mainly, he believes, because of the widening gap in incomes. Americans are less likely today to marry outside their class. Children from lower classes are less likely to spend time with their peers or take part in community activities and have less confidence, while the trend for middle-class children is the opposite. [For more on this youth growing class gap, see "Still Bowling Alone?"] “Kids coming from upper middle-class backgrounds are living in a different world now from kids coming from working-class or less well-off backgrounds,” Putnam says, adding the sense of collective responsibility for children in a community has disappeared.

Putnam has had a receptive hearing from both George W. Bush and Barack Obama on this issue because it goes to core American values. He is arguing for a focus on early childhood education and child welfare.

“Historically, Americans aren’t that concerned about equality of outcomes but they are very concerned about equality of opportunity,” he says. “The real victims of this are kids. Almost everyone agrees on that, including Republicans. If you could get them to focus on it, you could get a pretty broad consensus on child-focused initiatives in the interests of equality of opportunity.”

That would be easier in an era that was less polarised politically, where consensus is elusive even on issues on which there is underlying agreement.

See “Trapped in echo chamber world of our own opinions“, The Australian (by Mike Steketee, 4/7/11)

Extinction of Western Religion?

Flickr photo by moominsean

CNN reports the projected extinction of western religion.

A few major caveats:

1) The underlying paper on which this report is based only focuses on Western Europe (which has seen rising rates of secularization much faster than in the US).  While rates of “nonery” (those saying “none” to a question of what their religious tradition is) have risen dramatically in the US (see “American Grace“), most of these “nones” still actually believe in God, they just haven’t found the right church; and

2) Relatedly, these projections assume that people flip to be “secular” to mirror the populations around them, but assumes that the religious environment itself doesn’t change to attract these seculars.  U.S. history is rife with examples of religious entrepreneurship — religious leaders inventing or reinventing religion to meet changed needs.  “American Grace” in Chapter 6 discusses a host of these like megachurches, Mormonism, circuit riders, the chapel car, cyber- religion, televangelism, etc.

Excerpt from “American Grace“:

In the nineteenth century, the American frontie4r presented a problem for religious leaders.  People, especially young people, were spread out in far-flung communities, many of which were too new to have churches.  And so both Protestant ministers and catholic priests came up with an ingenious solution — the chapel car.  Clergy would use these train cars repurposed into mini-chapels to travel from town to town, holding services for the otherwise unchurched settlers on the frontier.  They are largely forgotten today, but in their day chapel cars represented the state of the art in bringing religion to remote areas.

The paper by Abrams et. al, summarized in the CNN story, ignores this entrepreneurship and assumes that religious leaders and entrepreneurs will sit idly by and watch their denominations dwindle rather than invent new ways of helping to attract new converts.  This seems extremely short-sided in making predictions of the future.

The quote from Peter Berger at the end of the CNN story is telling.

Peter Berger, a former president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, once said that, “People will become so bored with what religious groups have to offer that they will look elsewhere.”

He said Protestantism “has reached the strange state of self-liquidation,” that Catholicism was in severe crisis, and anticipated that “religions are likely to survive in small enclaves and pockets” in the United States.

He made those predictions in February 1968.

Obviously Berger’s prediction hasn’t materialized.

For more detail, see paper by Daniel Abrams, Richard Wiener and Haley A. Yaple called “A mathematical model of social group competition with application to the growth of religious non-affiliation,”presented it this week at the Dallas meeting of the American Physical Society.

For more blog posts on “American Grace”, visit here.

Kids vying to be seen as social influencers

Social butterfly; Flickr photo by massdistracton

Excerpt of WSJ piece on what PeerIndex calls the S&P rating of kids’ online social presence:

When Katie Miller went to Las Vegas this Thanksgiving, she tweeted about the lavish buffets and posted pictures of her seats at the aquatic spectacle “Le Reve” at the Wynn Las Vegas hotel.

A week later, the 25-year-old account executive at a public-relations firm got an email inviting her to a swanky holiday party on Manhattan’s West Side.

“At first I was confused,” Ms. Miller said. She read on to learn that she had been singled out as a “high-level influencer” by the event’s sponsors, including the Venetian and Palazzo hotels in Las Vegas, and a tech company called Klout, which ranks people based on their influence in social-media circles. “I was honored,” she said, sipping a cocktail at the $30,000 fete.

So much for wealth, looks or talent. Today, a new generation of VIPs is cultivating coolness through the world of social media. Here, ordinary folks can become “influential” overnight depending on the number and kinds of people who follow them on Twitter or comment on their Facebook pages.

People have been burnishing their online reputations for years, padding their resumes on professional networking site LinkedIn and trying to affect the search results that appear when someone Googles their names. Now, they’re targeting something once thought to be far more difficult to measure: influence over fellow consumers.

Some of the “influence” is real, but other youth are trying to game the system, befriending lots of others on Twitter in “one night stands” in the hopes of upping their own popularity and then dumping these “friends” a day later, or dramatically increasing their number of retweets in the hopes that they get greater attention or credit for Twitter traffic. Others realized that by raising the ratio of “those Twitter accounts following you” to “those Twitter accounts you follow”, they could increase their score. Companies are trying to use these services like Klout, PeerIndex, TweetLevel or Twitalyzer (which processes Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn data) in an effort to determine which teens are popular and trusted by others.

Read “Wannabe Cool Kids Aim to Game the Web’s New Social Scorekeepers — Sites Use Secret Formulas to Rank Users’ Online ‘Influence’ From 1 to 100; ‘It’s an Ego Thing’ ” (Wall Street Journal, By Jessica E. Vascellaro, Feb. 8, 2011)

While they are in their early days, it’s not clear that any of these companies yet score accurately the true influence of youth or adults, as evidenced by how this can be gamed.

See also, “Web of Popularity Achieved by Bullying” (New York Times, by Tara Parker-Pope, 2/15/11) that notes that “students near the top of the social hierarchy are often both perpetrators and victims of aggressive behavior involving their peers.”

Gov. Patrick invites civic leader from each of Massachusetts’ 351 cities/towns to inauguration

Project 351 invited a 8th grade community service leader from each of Massachusetts’ 351 cities and towns to Boston for Martin Luther King’s Birthday (January 15, 2011). They served as  “Youth Ambassadors” in a joint rally followed by a day of service with Governor Patrick and Celtics star Ray Allen.

It’s a wonderful chance to inspire these service stalwarts, recognize their achievements, and send them back to their schools with the hopes that thousands of other Massachusetts students will emulate their example.  It is also a great way to help cultivate political interest among our nation’s soon-to-be voters.  [Superintendents and principals chose the "Youth Ambassadors" in their communities based on their strong ethic of service.]

Among their acts of service was donating 1000 books to children of the four hundred Haitian earthquake evacuees living in the Boston area.

More here and 6:00 WGBH video here.

See “State’s youth find reward in service” (Boston Globe, Jan. 16, 2011)

Designing games to save the world

WoW game screenshot - Flickr photo by wynter

Jane McGonigal, director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future, notes that the amount of time that young people spend gaming is already large and predicted to become extraordinary.  500 million people (mainly youth) worldwide spend more time gaming than in school and this number is projected to grow to 1.5 billion in a decade.  These 500 million noticeably already game enough to make them experts by age 21, according to Gladwell’s Outliers book that focuses on the importance of accumulating 10,000 hours to become a virtuoso.

So rather than wag our fingers at gamers, we should recognize what is great about game playing and why they do it, and then try to channel these skills and energy into saving the world.

Why they do it?

McGonigal cites an economist’s belief that youth are making rational choices to spend more time in virtual worlds since they are better than the real world.  She notes that there is no unemployment in World of Warcraft and hundreds of thousands of potential collaborators.  Youth can at any time participate in a mission that is constantly at the verge of what they can accomplish and be part of an inspiring story.  They get Plus-1 intelligence and Plus-1 feedback on their quests.

What do youth get extremely good at through video games:

1) expressing urgent optimism

2) forming a tight social fabric.  McGonigal believes that it takes a lot of trust to play games with people (since others stay in the games until they end, play by the rules, etc.)  [I'm not sure how solid this basis of evidence is, although McGonigal has interesting anecdotes and alludes to research, of which I'm unsure how scientific it is.]

3) gamers are in such blissful productivity that they are happier working hard than relaxing.

4) gamers take on an adventure with epic meaning.  [She notes that the second biggest wiki in the world after Wikipedia is the World of Warcraft wiki with almost 80,000 articles, which 5 million people access monthly.]

What is great about it?

“Games make it easy to build stronger social bonds with our friends and family. Studies show that we like and trust someone better after we play a game with them — even if they beat us. And we’re more likely to help someone in real life after we’ve helped them in an online game. It’s no wonder that 40% of all user time on Facebook is spent playing social games. They’re a fast and reliable way to strengthen our connection with people we care about.” [note: not sure what studies she is referring to, although apparently in some of her own games she has clearly observed such behavior.  McGonigal has said elsewhere that "Thirty minutes of playing a co-op game changes for an entire week how cooperative we are in real life....Just ninety seconds of playing with an avatar can change your odds for success in a real-world situation for 24 hours....The science shows that it doesn’t matter where you get your positive emotions; if you feel a positive emotion it has the same impact on your health and happiness regardless of where it comes from."] From “REVIEW — Be a Gamer, Save the World — Videogames make players feel like their best selves; Why not give them real problems to solve?” By Jane McGonigal (Wall St. Journal, January 22, 2011, p. C3)  [essay is adapted from "Reality Is Broken" by Jane McGonigal, Penguin Press, 2011. ]

Elsewhere McGonigal notes generally that “Studies [again not sure what studies she is referring to] show that cooperative gameplay lifts our mood longer, and strengthens our friendships more, than competing against each other.”  McGonigal also states “research shows that social ties are strengthened much more when we play games in the same room than when we play games together online.”

How to use it to save the world?

The key is to harness all the positive parts of gaming – concentration, motivation, hard work, inspiration — for positive ends. The challenge is not to ignore games but design games that make the real world as exciting as games and in the process give us knowledge and skills useful to solving real world problems.  She says that maybe we should spur developers by offering a “Nobel”-like Prize to the best invention of a game each year that helps solve a really important social problem.

Superpowers add up to superempowered, hopeful individuals.    The challenge is to convince gamers that they are also empowered to change the real world.  We need to make people’s rewards, feedback, motivation be as high in the real world.  We have to make the real world more like a game.

One reviewer skeptical of games (Catherine DeLange) noted that games are everywhere in our life and can be a force for good; “Before writing this review, for example, I went for a run. I was tired and felt like giving up after 30 minutes, but stuck it out for 45. Why? Because I knew when I got home I’d be docking my iPod with my computer and logging my run on a website called Nike Plus. The site not only tracks my progress and records my mood, but also lets me “level up” the more I run. Since I joined up, I’ve run 858 kilometres, so I’m classed as a green runner. When I hit 1000 km I’ll move up to blue, hopefully ahead of my running buddies who joined up with me. I know every extra step I run will get me further in this game.”

McGonigal has tried at least 6 games (World Without Oil; Superstruct; Evoke;  Cruel 2 b Kind;  Chorewars and Jane the Concussion Slayer – the latter to deal with a brain concussion from which she was recuperating).

She also recommends games that others have created.  The Extraordinaries provides players with a mission and instructions on how to solve it; the mission is tailored to the needs of a non-profit and the public like tracking and photographing life-saving defibrillators’ location.  The information is then uploaded to a First Aid Corps database, that tracks the location of publicly accessible defibrillators world-wide, in order to be available to help save lives.  Elude is a game to help caregivers understand what depression feels like: players complete the various game levels twice, the second made significantly harder to mirror the difficulties of achieving tasks while depressed.

1) World Without Oil: piloted in 2007 with 17,000 players.  Gamers are forced to challenge themselves to survive in a world without oil.  McGonigal claims that most players are actively continuing many of the oil-free skills they learned or invented in the game.

2) Superstruct: a supercomputer has determined that world is coming to an end and players have to invent the future of energy, future of food, health, security, social safety net.    8,000 gamers played for 8 weeks and came up with 500 out-of-the-box solutions to these problems.

3) Evoke with World Bank Institute (March 2010).  WBI invited folks in sub-Saharan Africa and in the developing world to partner together and test and develop their social entrepreneurship skills. Over 10 weeks, the gamers worked on 10 missions  addressing  issues like poverty, hunger, sustainable energy, water security, conflict, disaster relief, health care, education, and human rights. The stories were told in a graphic novel, that demanded local insight, sustainability, vision, and resourcefulness. WBI succeeded in attracting just under 20,000 young participants from over 130 countries. The collaboration among Evoke gamers in only 10 weeks led to more than 50 social enterprises being launched. “One example is this great project called Libraries Across Africa. The idea is basically a McDonalds of libraries that has money-making ventures (food, phone service) surrounding the library to make it self-supporting.

While McGonigal’s framing seems a bit pollyannish, for sure we should make lemonade of video games, even if we view them as lemons.  She notes that gamers are now gaming to escape from the real world. She observes that Herodotus said dice games were invented to distract Libyans from their famine; Libyans survived for 18 years, by eating one day and fasting the next all while distracted from their hunger by game playing.  Herodotus ultimately realized the famine was not ending so he directed the Libyans to play a final dice game and the winners were sent on an epic adventure to find a new place to live.  She notes that there is some genetic evidence that this is true: Etruscans appear to have left Libya to found Roman empire around this time.  McGonigal hopes and believes that we can empower young people to make an optimistic future come to pass.

See also earlier post on “Social Capital Games” where we discussed two of McGonigal’s efforts “Cruel 2 b kind” and “Chorewars.”

See also Gaming can make the world a better place (Jane McGonigal TED 2010 talk).

Upward Mobility Gap

Flickr photo by Herve Demers

Doyle McManus (of the L.A. Times) has a nice piece citing Robert Putnam on some of our unpublished research evincing “canaries in the coalmine” that are likely to block upward mobility in the US in the decades ahead if unremedied.

Opportunity in America isn’t what it used to be either. Among children born into low-income households, more than two-thirds grow up to earn a below-average income, and only 6 percent make it all the way up the ladder into the affluent top one-fifth of income earners, according to a study by economists at Washington’s Brookings Institution…. Children born into poverty in Canada, Britain, Germany or France have a statistically better chance of reaching the top than poor kids do in the United States….

[In addition to the decline of public schools,] Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam argues that thanks partly to the rise of two-income households, intermarriage between rich and poor has declined, choking off another historical upward path for the underprivileged….”We’re becoming two societies, two Americas,” Putnam told me recently. “There’s a deepening class divide that shows up in many places. It’s not just a matter of income. Education is becoming the key discriminant in American life. Family structure is part of it too.”…

“Success in life increasingly depends on how smart you were in choosing your parents,” Putnam said. “And that flies in the face of the fundamental American bargain — that every kid ought to have access to the same opportunities.”…Most Americans accept inequality in the economy as long as the ladder of opportunity is accessible to anyone who wants to work hard. The best way for America to reclaim its self-image as a land of opportunity is to ensure that every kid has access to a decent education — now more than ever the first step onto the ladder. That’s why bipartisan education reform isn’t just about fixing schools; it’s about repairing the fabric of American society.

Read “The Upward Mobility Gap” (Doyle McManus, L.A. Times, 1/2/11)

See also some interesting recent articles in NY Times on how pay of superstars stifles everybody else, and another article that attempts to reconcile Americans’ dislike of equalizing income with declining mobility by showing how in America being middle class is more driven by aspirations than income.  And finally, research conducted at Harvard Business School that ironically shows that most Americans would prefer an income distribution more similar to Sweden’s (far more egalitarian than in the US) over the current American income distribution.

Paul Krugman in “A Tale of Two Moralities” (NY Times Op-Ed, January 15, 2011) writes: “…I’ll also have a lot to say about how far we really are from being a society of equal opportunity, in which success depends solely on one’s own efforts.”

Michael Gerson (Washington Post columnist) also had a very thoughtful column on this issue, indicating that this issue (upward mobility) should be the issue that Republicans should be discussing.  See “The economic debate that we should be having” (Dec. 14, 2010)  Gerson writes:

“…the main reasons for inequality are failing schools, depressed and dysfunctional communities and fragmented families. For the most part, inequality does not result from a lack of consumption by the poor but from a lack of social capital and opportunity.

This does not release conservatives from responsibility because the distribution of social capital and opportunity is dramatically unequal. Economic inequality can be justified as the reward for greater effort – so long as there is also social mobility. In the absence of mobility, capitalism becomes a caste system. And this is what America, in violation of its self-image, threatens to become. The United States has less upward economic mobility among lower-income families than Canada, Finland or Sweden. Americans who are born into the middle class have a roughly equal chance of ascending or descending the economic ladder. But Americans born poor are likely to stay on its lowest rungs.

Addressing the actual causes of inequality should be common ground for the center-left and center-right – and politically appealing to American voters, who are generally more concerned about opportunity than income equality. A mobility agenda might include measures to discourage teen pregnancy; increase the rewards for work; encourage wealth-building and entrepreneurship; reform preschool programs; improve infant and child health; increase teacher quality; and increase high school graduation rates and college attendance among the poor. Children of low-income parents who gain a college degree triple their chance of earning $85,000 a year or more. If America had the same fraction of single-parent families as it had in 1970, the child poverty rate would be about 30 percent lower.”

Instilling civics in our youth

Flickr photo by calsidyrose

A recent report “High Schools, Civics, and Citizenship” crossed my desk with some surprising findings.

First, a note of methodological caution: the survey was a combination mail and e-mail survey with quite low response rates of 6-17%; about 70% of the responses came from e-mail survey inquiries with a 6% response rate.  I’m not familiar with the research group (FDR Group), but based on the response rates, I’m not sure I’d bet my first born yet on the results.  That said…

One thing interesting about the survey is what was or wasn’t asked.  The researchers at the conservative American Enterprise Institute don’t even ask the high school social studies teachers surveyed how important it is to impart civic skills (organizing others, running a meeting, petitioning others, civic research, presenting evidence persuasively, etc.), even though virtually all scholars agree that civic skills, civic knowledge and an activist civic disposition are the three critical legs to raising more active citizens.  Way too many civics courses focus on a mindless memorization of political knowledge (how a bill becomes law, how many Senators there are, etc.) which while important, are far less effective unless these courses also impart civic skills and a sense of efficacy (that students can make a difference).  For more on this, see for example, APSA Task force member William Galston’s, Civic Education and Political Participation (PS: Political and Politics Journal, April 2004) or read the APSA Task Force report Democracy at Risk, 2004)

Two other interesting takeaways from the report:

1) 37% of the public teachers surveyed said their high school had a community-service requirement for graduation versus 82% of the private schools (which were a mix of Catholic parochial schools and secular schools).  If these numbers are true, they are incredibly encouraging since they show a virtual quadrupling of rates for public schools from 2002 and a doubling among private schools.  An authoritative National Council for Educational Statistics 2002 estimate put these at 10% for public schools and 40% for private schools.  My guess and fear is that at least some of this apparently significant rise is a consequence of the low response rate on the survey and that AEI heard from the most civicly-minded teachers from the most civicly-minded schools.

2) How unified are Democratic and Republican teachers in what to teach?  The American Enterprise Institute-sponsored report asks about “The 12 concepts of citizenship”.  Note: the grouping of these items into the “12 concepts of citizenship” is the surveyors’ grouping, not the respondents.  The high school social studies teachers surveyed were NOT told that these were concepts of citizenship but asked instead “For each item below, please indicate how important do you think it should be for your high school to teach students this?”  That’s a different question since as a teacher I might think it is essential for students to learn algebra or learn about world religions even though I wouldn’t as a teacher lump these subjects under “citizenship.”  And one of the things asked about — instilling good “work habits” I assume that math teachers, language teachers, English teachers, etc. would all equally agree is essential.  Furthermore, as noted above, imparting civic skills were not asked about.  With those serious caveats, from among the 12 items asked about, Republican and Democratic teachers were fairly unified on most of these (7 out of 12, covering topics like: the importance of identifying protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights; teaching good work habits; embracing civic responsibilities like jury duty or voting; teaching about federalism, separation of power, and checks and balances; being knowledgeable about key periods like the American Founding, the Civil War and the Cold War; understanding economic concepts like supply and demand and the role of market incentives; and knowing facts (e.g. location of fifty states) and dates (e.g., Pearl Harbor).  Republican teachers did not disagree markedly from Democratic teachers in which they thought were more or less important:  the Bill of Rights protections; instilling hard work; and embracing civic duties were more important, and teaching facts less important.

Where they did disagree was interesting.  Republican teachers were significantly more likely to think that teaching students to follow rules and respect authority was important (70% of Republican teachers thought it was absolutely essential vs. 55% of Democratic teachers).  Democratic teachers were far more likely to stress: teaching tolerance of people and groups who were different (86% absolutely essential for Democratic Teachers vs. 63% for Republican); teaching students to see themselves as global citizens living in an interconnected world (67% absolutely essential Dem. teachers vs. 41% Republican); developing habits of community service such as volunteering and raising money for causes (45% absolutely essential among Democratic teachers vs. 35% for Republican teachers); and teaching students to be activists who challenge the status quo of our political system and seek to remedy injustices (45% essential among Democratic teachers vs. 23% among Republican teachers).  That last item seems worded in a way designed to divide teachers along partisan lines.  The researchers behind the study could equally well have worded this “teach students to actively get involved and take a stand on political or community issues with which they disagree with how things are being handled” and my guess is that there would have been far less of a Republican/Democratic split and that all teachers would have agreed that being an active citizen is important, even if Republicans are turned off by the buzzwords of “activism” and “remedy injustices”.

Anyway, food for thought…

AEI’s Civics study available here.

2010 voter turnout up, but not for youth and blacks (UPDATED)

Flickr photo by Dean Terry

Preliminary evidence suggests that voting turnout among all Americans was up in the November 2010 election.  Compared with the last non-presidential election (2006), both voting turnout experts (Curtis Gans and Michael McDonald) agree that turnout among eligible voters rose 1.1-1.2 percentage points (based on preliminary estimates that will obviously change as all ballots are counted and certified). Regardless of whether one likes the outcome in 2010, it is civic good news that more Americans got involved.

Preliminary evidence suggests electoral turnout rose in at least nine states, and significantly in Texas, Florida and Minnesota.  Ohio and Pennsylvania, among other states, seems to have experienced a turnout decline.  [Curtis Gans projects voting turnout at 42 percent of registered voters; Michael McDonald believes that 41.5% of voting-eligible Americans turned out to vote.]  Note: McDonald has now lowered his turnout estimate 1.2 percentage points to 40.3% (VEP Highest Office Turnout, as of 11/8/10).

But the bad news is what voices are being heard or not heard. Voting turnout rates were down among young voters (18-29) and blacks made up a lower percentage of voters in 2010 than in 2008 when Obama’s candidacy excited African-Americans to vote.  For example, blacks made up 12% of voters in 2008 and appeared to make up just 10% of voters in 2010 (based on exit polls).  This drop, if it holds up in more authoritative numbers like the Current Population Survey would  negate this encouraging finding reported in 2008 that the black-white voting gap had disappeared.    [Exit polls suggest that Hispanics maintained their share of the electorate, rising from 7% in 2008 to 8% in 2010, although one would have to compare this rise against their expanding voting-eligible numbers to truly understand whether their political voice was diluted, and if so, how much.]  It wasn’t a simple story of the richest folks’ accounting for more of the votes, since those earning $100,000 or more accounted for 26% of the votes in both 2008 and 2010, but due to the elimination of restrictions on corporate campaign contributions in the wake of the 2010 Citizens United case, the wealthy disproportionately had chances to influence election outcomes even before voters got to their polling places.

[For information on 2008 turnout, click here.]