Fewer details are available about Catholic finances, but surveys suggest that religious giving by Catholics as a fraction of income was slashed even more dramatically than among Protestants, falling by 59 percent between 1960–63 and 1988–89.29 Finally, as a fraction of national income, contributions to the thousands of United Way organizations in communities across the country are now less than half the level of 1960 and in fact have reached a level not seen since early in the century. (Figure 32 shows as well that the emergence of “alternative campaigns” for activist nonprofit groups in the 1980s and 1990s made little dent in the long-term decline.)
This array of evidence on declining generosity is reinforced by what Americans from all walks of life have told Roper and Yankelovich pollsters in the two longest-running surveys of philanthropy. As recently as the first half of the 1980s, in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, figure 33 shows, nearly half of all American adults reported that they had made a contribution to charity in the previous month, and more than half said that they contributed to religious groups at least “occasionally.” However, both these barometers of self-reported generosity fell steadily over the next two decades. By the prosperous mid-1990s barely one American in three reported any charitable contribution in the previous month, and fewer than two in five claimed even occasional religious giving.30 In other words, what donors themselves told pollsters squares with reports from recipients: In the last decades of the twentieth century, despite increasing prosperity, the generosity of the average American sank.
This decline has powerful material implications for American support of community institutions. If we were giving, at century’s end, the same fraction of our income as our parents gave in 1960, United Way campaigns would have nearly $4 billion more annually to invest in good works, U.S. religious congregations would have over $20 billion more annually, and total national philanthropic giving would jump by roughly $50 billion a year.31 Because our real personal incomes are more than twice those of our parents, we are still contributing more than they did in absolute dollars. In relative terms, however, our spending for others has lagged well behind our spending on ourselves.
Figure 33: Reported Charitable Giving Declined in the 1980s and 1990s
Idiosyncratic explanations have been offered for each of these instances of declining generosity. Decline in Protestant giving has been linked to inadequate emphasis on “stewardship,” particularly among congregational leaders.32 Decline in Catholic giving has been attributed to disaffection with church doctrine, particularly on birth control and male hegemony.33 Decline in United Way giving has been blamed on a sex-and-embezzlement scandal in 1992, as well as on competition from the proliferation of “alternative” campaigns. However, given the breadth and simultaneity of the post-1960 declines in giving by Americans, it is more plausible to seek the explanation in some wider social change rather than in the foibles of a particular recipient organization. After years of high and rising generosity for many good causes, over the last four decades Americans have become steadily more tight-fisted, precisely when we have also disengaged from the social life of our communities.
TRENDS IN VOLUNTEERING over the last several decades are more complicated and in some respects more intriguing than the uniform decline that characterizes most dimensions of social capital in America in this period. Americans have worked on fewer and fewer community projects over these decades, corresponding to the trends in declining community involvement that we have already reviewed. In 1975–76 more than two in every five American adults said that they had worked on some community project in the previous year, but by 1998–99 that figure had dropped to fewer than one in three. (Figure 34 shows that the average number of such projects per year fell by more than 40 percent.)
Figure 34: Volunteering Up, Community Projects Down, 1975–1999
By contrast, these same people report a steady increase in volunteering over this same period. That “volunteering” is reported two to three times more frequently than “working on a community project” suggests that most people see their volunteering as providing personal rather than community service. That volunteering and community projects are moving in opposite directions implies that one-on-one volunteering is increasingly common. Whatever the venue, the average American volunteered a little over six times per year in the 1970s, but by the 1990s that figure had risen to nearly eight times per year. (See figure 34.) This conclusion is broadly consistent with reports from the Gallup poll that the fraction of Americans who say they are “involved in any charity or social service activities, such as helping the poor, the sick, or the elderly” rose steadily from 26 percent in 1977 to 46 percent in 1991.34
Coupled with the declining involvement in churches and clubs that we have already noted, this growth of volunteerism poses an explanatory puzzle. Today, as two decades ago, the vast majority of volunteers are recruited through local networks of religious and other civic associations. These recruitment pools have been shrinking rapidly over the same period that volunteering has been on the rise. How could volunteerism be increasing while the primary channels of volunteer recruitment are drying up?
Faced with a shrinking pool of church and club activists, volunteer recruiters could have stepped up their efforts among the remaining activists, or they could have reached outside the usual organizational networks. For the most part, the evidence suggests, they did the latter. Although the rate of volunteering among the shrinking number of people who regularly attend both church and club meetings rose by more than half between 1975 and 1999, the rate of volunteering among the growing number of people who never attend either church or club meetings more than tripled over this same period.35
Church- and clubgoers still provide the most regular volunteers, but compared with two decades ago, organizations are less exclusively the route to volunteering. Optimistically we might say that volunteerism has begun to spread beyond the bounds of traditional community organizations. A less optimistic interpretation would add that commitments to volunteerism are more fragile and more sporadic now that they depend on single-stranded obligations, without reinforcement from well-woven cords of organizational involvement.36
Who are these new volunteers, sailing so boldly against the tide of civic disengagement? In fact, they turn out to be a familiar group, for virtually the entire increase is concentrated among people aged sixty and over. Volunteering among seniors has nearly doubled over the last quarter century (from an average of 6 times per year to an average of 12 times per year). At the same time, volunteering has grown modestly (from roughly 3.5 to roughly 4.5 times per year) among twenty-somethings and has actually declined among the rest of us (aged thirty to fifty-nine). Figure 35 arrays the net trends in volunteering in the last quarter century by various age brackets.37 In effect, this graph holds constant any effect of aging per se and compares the frequency of volunteering among people of a certain age in 1998 with the frequency of volunteering among people of that same age in 1975. Thus, for example, people in their early twenties in 1998 volunteered 39 percent more frequently than had people that age in 1975. Similarly, people over seventy-five in 1998 volunteered 140 percent more frequently than people that age had in 1975. Conversely, people in their early thirties in 1998 volunteered 29 percent less often than people that same age had done in 1975.
Because different generations of Americans were passing through each of these age-defined windows during these years, we can identify the trends by generation. Americans born in the first third of the twentieth century and (to a lesser extent) their grandchildren in the so-called millennial generation demonstrated higher levels of volunteerism in 1998 than people their age had shown in the 1970s, but volunteerism among the late baby boomers (in their thirties and forties in the 1990s) is actually lower now than among people of that age in 1975.
Figure 35: Trends in Volunteering by Age Category, 1975–1998
As we noted earlier, participation in community projects (unlike volunteering
in general) has declined over the last quarter century. The generational patterns underlying that decline turn out to be exactly parallel to the patterns underlying the changes in volunteering. As figure 36 shows, participation in community projects has declined in all age categories, but the decline is especially dramatic among people in their thirties and most limited among people over sixty-five. In other words, although participation in community projects is less common today than a quarter century ago, members of the long civic generation continue to contribute to such projects in disproportionate numbers, whereas boomers are much less likely to show up than people their age were a quarter century ago.
Traditionally, retirement has meant withdrawal from civic activity, and historically, volunteering declined after age fifty, but the current generation of seniors has turned that conventional wisdom on its head. They are largely responsible for the boom in volunteering in recent decades, and they have resisted most staunchly the decline in participation in community projects.
On the other hand, physically demanding forms of volunteering have entered hard times in recent years, probably because they could not cushion the fall in younger volunteers by drawing on the boom in older volunteers. For example, although more than 40 percent of the U.S. population is protected by all- or mostly volunteer fire departments, the nationwide ratio of volunteers to professional firefighters fell by a quarter between 1983 and 1997, as fewer younger volunteers signed up to replace their elders and communities were forced to hire professionals. Similarly, nationwide blood donations per one thousand adults declined steadily from eighty units in 1987 to sixty-two units in 1997, even though fear of contracting AIDS through blood donation, a major inhibitor of blood donation in the 1980s, fell substantially over these same years. One cause of declining blood donations appears to be the failure of younger generations to replace the aging long civic generation.38 In short, volunteering that can be done by senior citizens, such as youth mentoring, is up. Volunteering that requires a younger constitution, such as fighting fires or giving blood, is down.
Figure 36: Trends in Participation in Community Projects by Age Category, 1975–1998
WHY DID PEOPLE OVER sixty volunteer in greater numbers in the 1990s than in the 1970s? Several factors are relevant, though none seems entirely to explain the trend.39 Time diary studies have shown a significant growth in free time among people over sixty over the last twenty to thirty years—roughly ten more hours a week between 1975 and 1995—in part because of earlier retirement (voluntary and involuntary).40 Marked improvements in the health and finances of the elderly over the last several decades have enabled them to enjoy longer, more active postretirement lives than their predecessors. In addition, one central theme of this book is that people born between 1910 and 1940 constitute a “long civic generation”—that is, a cohort of men and women who have been more engaged in civic affairs throughout their lives—voting more, joining more, trusting more, and so on—than either their predecessors or their successors in the sequence of generations. At the end of the century, that generation comprised virtually the entire cohort of people aged sixty and above. True to their own past, even in retirement they continue to be exceptionally good citizens.
In short, the increase in volunteering in recent decades is concentrated in the one generation most resistant to civic disengagement. The growth of volunteerism in the face of church and club debility is mostly attributable to a generation predisposed to civic responsibility and enjoying enhanced leisure and vitality. In the swollen cohort of boomers born between 1950 and 1965, by contrast, volunteerism is ebbing, particularly if it involves community projects. In that sense, the growth of volunteering in recent years is real, but not really an exception to the broader generational decline in social capital. At century’s end we were enjoying not a springtime of volunteerism, but an Indian summer.
Moreover, the type of volunteering that involves community projects, as distinct from assistance from one individual to another, has actually declined. In chapter 2 (table 1) we saw that individualized civic acts, such as writing to the editor, have diminished less rapidly than collective civic acts, such as attending a public meeting or working in a local organization. Similarly, we have now discovered, while individualized acts of benevolence, such as reading to a shut-in, have resisted the nationwide decline in civic involvement, community projects that require collective effort, such as refurbishing a neighborhood park, have not.
The rise in volunteering is sometimes interpreted as a natural counter-weight to the decline in other forms of civic participation. Disenchanted with government, it is said, members of the younger generation are rolling up their sleeves to get the job done themselves. The profile of the new volunteerism directly contradicts that optimistic thesis. First, the rise in volunteering is concentrated among the boomers’ aging, civic parents, whereas the civic dropouts are drawn disproportionately from the boomers.
Second, volunteering is part of the syndrome of good citizenship and political involvement, not an alternative to it. Volunteers are more interested in politics and less cynical about political leaders than nonvolunteers are. Volunteering is a sign of positive engagement with politics, not a sign of rejection of politics. This is as true for young adults as anyone else, and it is as true at the turn of the century as it was twenty-five years earlier. Conversely, political cynics, even young cynics, are less likely than other people to volunteer. Political alienation rose over the last several decades of the twentieth century, and so did volunteering, but volunteering rose despite the greater alienation, not because of it.41
This evidence also deflates any easy optimism about the future of volunteerism, for the recent growth has depended upon a generation fated to pass from the scene over the next decade or two. It is, of course, possible that when boomers reach retirement age after 2010 they too will increase their level of volunteering. Indeed, compared with their own preretirement levels, they probably will. Compared with their elders, however, they probably will not. So far, the boomer cohort continues to be less disposed to civic engagement than their parents and even to some extent less than their own children, so it is hazardous to assume that the rising tide of volunteerism of the past two decades will persist in the next two.
One may hope—indeed, I do—that a new spirit of volunteerism is beginning to bubble up from the millennial generation. A wide range of evidence (including that summarized in figure 35 and figure 36, as well as evidence summarized in chapter 14) suggests that young Americans in the 1990s displayed a commitment to volunteerism without parallel among their immediate predecessors. This development is the most promising sign of any that I have discovered that America might be on the cusp of a new period of civic renewal, especially if this youthful volunteerism persists into adulthood and begins to expand beyond individual caregiving to broader engagement with social and political issues. However, the millennial generation will have their hands full if they are to make up for the impending departure of their highly civic grandparents and the longtime incivisme of their parents’ generation.
CHAPTER 8
Reciprocity, Honesty, and Trust
Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so tomorrow. ’Tis profitable for us both, that I shou’d labour with you to- day, and that you shou’d aid me to-morrow. I have no kindness for you, and know you have as little for me. I will not, therefore, take any pains upon your account; and should I labour with you upon my own account, in expectation of a return, I know I shou’d be disappointed, and that I shou’d in vain depend upon your gratitude. Here then I leave you to labour alone; you treat me in the same manner. The seasons change; and both of us lose our harvests for want of mutual confidence and security.
—David Hume1
THE TOUCHSTONE of social capital is the principle of generalized reciprocity— I’ll do this for you now, without expecting anything immediately in return and perhaps without even knowing you, confident that down the road you or someone else will return the favor. As philos
opher Michael Taylor has pointed out,
Each individual act in a system of reciprocity is usually characterized by a combination of what one might call short-term altruism and long-term self-interest: I help you out now in the (possibly vague, uncertain, and uncalculating) expectation that you will help me out in the future. Reciprocity is made up of a series of acts each of which is short-run altruistic (benefiting others at a cost to the altruist), but which together typically make every participant better off.2
The norm of generalized reciprocity is so fundamental to civilized life that all prominent moral codes contain some equivalent of the Golden Rule. Conversely, the ironic perversion of this principle—“Do unto others before they do unto you”—came to epitomize the self-interested “me decade.” When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in the early nineteenth century, he was struck by how Americans resisted temptation to take advantage of each other and instead looked out for their neighbors. As Tocqueville pointed out, however, American democracy worked not because Americans obeyed some impossibly idealistic rule of selflessness, but rather because we pursued “self-interest rightly understood.”3
Members of a community that follows the principle of generalized reciprocity—raking your leaves before they blow onto your neighbors’ yard, lending a dime to a stranger for a parking meter, buying a round of drinks the week you earn overtime, keeping an eye on a friend’s house, taking turns bringing snacks to Sunday school, caring for the child of the crack-head one flight down—find that their self-interest is served, just as Hume’s farmers would both have been better off by sharing their labors.
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