Bread and Circuses THE REPLACEMENT OF AMERICAN COMMUNITY LIFE Lyman Stone APRIL 2021 AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE Bread and Circuses THE REPLACEMENT OF AMERICAN COMMUNITY LIFE Lyman Stone APRIL 2021 AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ..................................................................................... 1 I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 2 What Is Associational Life? ............................................................................................. 3 Why Does Associational Life Matter? ............................................................................... 7 II. THE HISTORY OF ASSOCIATIONAL LIFE .......................................................... 10 The Bond of Brotherhood: The Fall, Rise, and Fall Again of Fraternal Life .............................. 10 The Young Republic: Voter Participation over Time .......................................................... 13 Hard Work: Unions and Labor Activism .......................................................................... 17 The Home Front: Veterans’ Organizations ..................................................................... 20 III. BREAD AND CIRCUSES: ARE SPORTS A FORM OF SOCIAL CAPITAL? ................... 23 Football vs. Boy Scouts: The Trade-Offs in Youth Lives ...................................................... 34 School Years: Training Ground for Adult Community Life ................................................. 36 Extended Adolescence and College Sports .................................................................... 38 IV. MEASURING ASSOCIATIONAL LIFE ............................................................... 40 Paper Trails: Measuring Organizations over Time ........................................................... 40 Seize the Day: Changes in How Americans Spend Their Time ............................................ 44 Complicating Factors: The General Social Survey and Reported Social Lives ....................... 46 How We Talk: The Long Arc of Associational Life .............................................................. 51 V. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................ 54 When It Counts: Community Health and COVID-19 ......................................................... 54 What Can Be Done? .................................................................................................... 60 ABOUT THE AUTHOR ..................................................................................... 62 NOTES ......................................................................................................... 63 ii Executive Summary n recent years, policymakers and cultural com- However, most of the change in associational life can I mentators have identified “social capital” as a key be attributed to essentially one factor: technological factor in determining individual and societal well- improvements leading to a higher standard of living. A being. But social capital is often hard to identify. wealthier society provides more benefits via the state Debates rage about what should count as social cap- instead of private organizations, even as the invention ital, how to measure it, what causes people or places of radio and television displaced many traditional to have more or less of it, and whether and how it information networks. Piggybacking on mass media, affects important social outcomes of interest. This popular sports have conquered the American calen- report focuses on one dimension of social capital as dar, displacing numerous other activities. This history particularly important and more concrete: associa- cannot be undone. tional life. How Americans socialize and spend time But government policies do matter. Greater school together, the kinds of organizations they form, and choice allowing educational pluralism could connect how they talk about life together are all relatively young Americans to broader associational oppor- tractable measures of one kind of social capital that tunities and more diverse avenues for social capi- may be important. tal accumulation. Alternatively, legally safeguarding Tracing the history of associational life from Amer- “coordinated leisure” times such as evenings, week- ica’s founding reveals that not all associations are ends, and holidays by adding more federal holidays, created equal. Some popular associations provide protecting workers from unpredictable work schedul- undeniably positive benefits for their participants ing, and reinstituting Sunday closure laws could also and society (such as churches or labor unions), while help. Furthermore, zoning rules that make it effec- others have proven deeply destructive (such as the tively impossible for social and civic associations to Ku Klux Klan). Still others, such as the once-popular construct facilities close to clusters of members could Knights of Pythias, seem to make little difference also be repealed. despite their large member counts. Thus, the link Nonetheless, while there is a role for government, between associational life and social capital is com- it’s ultimately up to everyday Americans to decide plicated. Intangible social relationships and ties that what kind of lives they want to live. The future of provide benefits for society arise from some forms of associational life in America will depend on what associational life, but not others. Americans really want. If they want modern bread Numerous factors have driven changes in asso- and circuses, they will get it. Rebuilding lost associa- ciational life over time, so no single cause can be tional life will require a critical mass of Americans to identified and no single policy response can revive make costly personal choices to reinvest in their com- associational life and corresponding social capital. munities and relationships. 1 I. Introduction ccording to Google Ngram, a massive searchable These questions ranged from extremely simple A database of published texts in various languages, to (as can be seen) absurd, but they reveal inter- the term “social capital” has risen from appearing once esting differences: A majority of respondents said per nine million published words in 1980 to once per social capital does not have to be “pro-social” or 300,000 today. A concept that was virtually unknown “laudable” (i.e., it doesn’t have to be socially produc- in recent memory is today twice as commonly cited tive—which is unusual, since economic capital is by as related terms such as “community development.” definition part of a production function). Many peo- Ideas such as social capital (or related “civil society,” ple (including experts on the subject such as Scott which shows a highly correlated rise) have become a Winship, then the senior-most staffer at the JEC major part of the political vocabulary of American life and prior head of the Social Capital Project) think of over the past 30 years. social capital as any social resource a person might The Joint Economic Committee (JEC) houses the use to achieve their goals. Others disagree, suggest- Social Capital Project, which has held hearings and ing that social capital should be defined as resources published papers on topics ranging from “deaths of that are socially beneficial. despair” to educational reform to housing policy. Even more strangely, while 92 percent of respon- There is a Social Capital Research consultancy ser- dents rejected that “having social capital means some- vice.1 The concept has come into its own in a polit- one owes me something,” 59 percent of respondents ically and economically powerful way. And yet, the agreed that social capital essentially means “reciproc- term means many things to many people. ity” in relationships. Effectively synonymous questions In an informal poll of my Twitter followers (who asked mere minutes apart to virtually the same group are likely to be policy-informed individuals familiar of people had polar opposite responses. And perhaps with the term social capital), across 26 hypothetical most jarringly of all, respondents were evenly split activities offered, only one scenario secured a major- about how to describe social capital. About half said ity of respondents saying it was “definitely” build- social capital is something individuals have, while about ing social capital.2 That scenario was: “You and a half said social capital is something communities have. group of people you met alone gather in person over This exercise was not scientific, but it proves a a few months to work on a shared interest project basic point: People don’t know what social capital together.” And yet in a follow-up question, most means. Even among people who use the term, it has respondents still thought that project was build- numerous different meanings. Virtually every paper ing social capital, even if the project was murder- about social capital spends its first sections simply ing a mutual enemy. A quarter of respondents said trying to define the term. It is so popular and vogu- praying alone in a closet builds social capital, and ish a label that every researcher wants to connect 61 percent said watching a popular Netflix series their work to it. As will be shown later in this report, alone at home builds social capital. On the other this has sometimes resulted in confusing outcomes, hand, majorities said interacting with someone on with social capital having well-demonstrated opposite Twitter