Civic Opportunity

de Vries, M., Kim, J.Y. & Han, H. The unequal landscape of civic opportunity in America. Nat Hum Behav (2023). https://doi-org.ccl.idm.oclc.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01743-1

The hollowing of civil society has threatened effective implementation of scientific solutions to pressing public challenges—which often depend on cultivating pro-social orientations commonly studied under the broad umbrella of social capital. Although robust research has studied the constituent components of social capital from the demand side (that is, the orientations people need for collective life in pluralistic societies, such as trust, cohesion and connectedness), the same precision has not been brought to the supply side. Here we define the concept of civic opportunity—opportunities people have to encounter civic experiences necessary for developing such orientations—and harness data science to map it across America. We demonstrate that civic opportunity is more highly correlated with pro-social outcomes such as mutual aid than other measures, but is unequally distributed, and its sources are underrepresented in the public dialogue. Our findings suggest greater attention to this fundamentally uneven landscape of civic opportunity.

Friendship and Civic Life

 Daniel A. Cox at the Survey Center on American Life:

Friendship predicts community involvement and civic participation. Sixty percent of Americans with at least six close friends say they have attended a local event or community meeting at least a few times in the past 12 months compared to only 33 percent of those with no close friends. Whether it’s going to the library, eating at a restaurant, or spending time at a bar, Americans with larger friend groups do all these things more often. Having more close friends also increases one's likelihood of talking to strangers. Seventy percent of Americans with at least six close friends report having had a conversation with a stranger at least a few times in the last 12 months. Americans with more close friends volunteer in their communities more often too.

Houses of Worship Are Unique in Civil Society

Jessica Grose at NYT:

I asked every sociologist I interviewed whether communities created around secular activities outside of houses of worship could give the same level of wraparound support that churches, temples and mosques are able to offer. Nearly across the board, the answer was no.

Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College, put it this way: “I can go play soccer on a Sunday morning and hang out with people from different races and different class backgrounds, and we can bond. But I’m not doing that with my grandparents and my grandchildren.” A soccer team can’t provide spiritual solace in the face of death, it probably doesn’t have a weekly charitable call and there’s no sense of connection to a heritage that goes back generations. You can get bits and pieces of these disparate qualities elsewhere, he said, but there’s no “one-stop shop” — at least not right now.

Jeffrey M Jones at Gallup:

U.S. church attendance has shown a small but noticeable decline compared with what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. In the four years before the pandemic, 2016 through 2019, an average of 34% of U.S. adults said they had attended church, synagogue, mosque or temple in the past seven days. From 2020 to the present, the average has been 30%, including a 31% reading in a May 1-24 survey.

The recent church attendance levels are about 10 percentage points lower than what Gallup measured in 2012 and most prior years.

David French at NYT:

Evangelicals are a particularly illustrative case. About half of self-identified evangelicals now attend church monthly or less often. They have religious zeal, but they lack religious community. So they find their band of brothers and sisters in the Trump movement. Even among actual churchgoing evangelicals, political alignment is often so important that it’s hard to feel a true sense of belonging unless you’re ideologically united with the people in the pews around you.

Citizen Science and the Great Backyard Bird Count

Many posts have discussed volunteering and civic virtue.

Julia Rubin at AP:

It’s a given that when the Great Backyard Bird Count begins Friday, Steve and Janet Kistler of Hart County, Kentucky, will be joining in. They’ve done so every year since the now-global tradition began 25 years ago.

For Moira Dalibor, a middle-school math teacher a couple hours away in Lexington, this will be the first count. She’s leading a group of students and parents to an arboretum for an exercise in data-gathering.

They’re expected to be among hundreds of thousands of people around the world counting and recording over four days. Last year, about 385,000 people from 192 countries took part in the Great Backyard Bird Count, or GBBC.

In India, which had the highest participation outside the U.S. last year, tens of thousands of people submitted bird checklists — a 28% increase from 2021.

This global data goes into the eBird database used by scientists for research on bird populations, which have declined sharply overall in past decades. It’s part of a rise in “citizen science” projects in which volunteers collect data about the natural world for use by researchers.

Youth Civic Engagement

From the Brennan Center:

Civic engage­ment is a key indic­ator of adult­hood. Young adults respond to the social and polit­ical issues of the day in a vari­ety of ways. After the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020, young people demon­strated against racial injustice in more than 10,000 peace­ful protests around the coun­try.

foot­note1_g6xcuor1 That fall saw record numbers of youth turn out for the pres­id­en­tial elec­tion; half of eligible voters ages 18–29 parti­cip­ated, compared with 39 percent in 2016. foot­note2_3ycctnz2 Climate change like­wise cata­lyzed young people, as nearly 30 percent of Gener­a­tion Z and Millen­ni­als made dona­tions, contac­ted public offi­cials, volun­teered, or protested, surpass­ing Gener­a­tion X and Baby Boomers. foot­note3_pisb­s1c3 Young people are commonly assumed to be disen­gaged, disil­lu­sioned, and unin­ter­ested in civic life. These trends chal­lenge that propos­i­tion.

Research­ers have consist­ently found that early civic engage­ment is mutu­ally bene­fi­cial to young people and to the communit­ies in which they parti­cip­ate. For example, devel­op­mental psycho­lo­gist Parissa Ballard and colleagues found that early civic engage­ment is asso­ci­ated with posit­ive health outcomes later in life. Voting, volun­teer­ing, and activ­ism in young adult­hood were related to improved mental health, greater educa­tional attain­ment, and higher personal and house­hold incomes. foot­note4_n49aljr4 Beyond these indi­vidual bene­fits, young adults are import­ant contrib­ut­ors to their local communit­ies. Tufts University’s Center for Inform­a­tion and Research on Civic Learn­ing and Engage­ment (CIRCLE) projec­ted that in the 2020 elec­tion cycle, young adults would play a partic­u­larly import­ant role in the pres­id­en­tial battle­ground states Wiscon­sin, North Caro­lina, and Flor­ida, as well as in Senate races in Color­ado, Maine, and Montana and congres­sional races in Iowa’s 1st District, Maine’s 2nd, and Geor­gi­a’s 7th. foot­note5_9alq4i75 The youth vote proved decis­ive in several states where the margin of victory was less than 50,000 votes, includ­ing Arizona, Geor­gia, and Pennsylvania. foot­note6_um60jqh6

National legis­la­tion and educa­tional policy reflect the import­ance of prepar­ing young people to become engaged and parti­cip­at­ory members of soci­ety. Recog­niz­ing the mutual bene­fits of community service for the advance­ment of communit­ies and the well-being of young people, Congress passed the National and Community Service Act of 1990 and the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993. The first law created the Commis­sion on National and Community Service to support school-based service-learn­ing programs, volun­teer and service programs in higher educa­tion, youth corps, and national service models; the second merged the commis­sion with the National Civil­ian Community Corps to estab­lish the Corpor­a­tion for National and Community Service, to support volun­teer and service oppor­tun­it­ies for all Amer­ic­ans. In 2009 Congress passed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve Amer­ica Act, reau­thor­iz­ing and expand­ing national and community service legis­la­tion to support lifelong volun­teer­ism and community service. Through these acts, Congress has emphas­ized the need for civic engage­ment, which helps youth become informed citizens as well as active members of their communit­ies through­out their life­time.

School curricula rein­force the expect­a­tion that young people will become engaged citizens. Accord­ing to the Center for Amer­ican Progress, 40 states and the District of Columbia require a civics course for high school gradu­ation, and 16 states require a civics exam to gradu­ate. However, only Mary­land and the District of Columbia require community service for all high school gradu­ates. foot­note7_eslmnjr7

1 Armed Conflict Loca­tion & Event Data Project (here­in­after ACLED), Demon­stra­tions and Polit­ical Viol­ence in Amer­ica: New Data for Summer 2020, Septem­ber 2020, https://acled­data.com/2020/09/03/demon­stra­tions-polit­ical-viol­ence-in-amer­ica-new-data-for-summer-2020/.
foot­note2_3ycctnz
2 Center for Inform­a­tion and Research on Civic Learn­ing and Engage­ment (here­in­after CIRCLE), “Half of Youth Voted in 2020, an 11-Point Increase from 2016,” April 29, 2021, https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/half-youth-voted-2020–11-point-increase-2016.
foot­note3_pisb­s1c
3 Alec Tyson, Brian Kennedy, and Cary Funk, “Gen Z, Millen­ni­als Stand Out for Climate Change Activ­ism, Social Media Engage­ment with Issue, ” Pew Research Center, May 26, 2021, https://www.pewre­search.org/science/2021/05/26/gen-z-millen­ni­als-stand-out-for-climate-change-activ­ism-social-media-engage­ment-with-issue/.
foot­note4_n49aljr
4 Parissa J. Ballard, Lind­say T. Hoyt, and Mark C. Pachucki, “Impacts of Adoles­cent and Young Adult Civic Engage­ment on Health and Socioeco­nomic Status in Adult­hood, ” Child Devel­op­ment 90, no. 4 (2019): 1138–54, https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12998.
foot­note5_9alq4i7
5 CIRCLE, “Youth Elect­oral Signi­fic­ance Index (YESI), ” last updated August 18, 2020, https://circle.tufts.edu/yesi2020.
foot­note6_um60jqh
6 CIRCLE, “Elec­tion Week 2020: Young People Increase Turnout, Lead Biden to Victory, ” Novem­ber 25, 2020, https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/elec­tion-week-2020#young-voters-and-youth-of-color-powered-biden-victory.
foot­note7_eslmnjr
7 Sarah Shapiro and Cath­er­ine Brown, “The State of Civics Educa­tion,

Giving and Volunteering During the Pandemic

 Jeffrey M. Jones at Gallup:

Eighty-one percent of Americans say they donated money to a religious or other charitable organization in the past year, and 56% volunteered time to such an organization. After dipping in April 2020 during the early stages of the pandemic, charitable donations have rebounded and are essentially back to the level measured in 2013 and 2017 surveys.

Volunteer activity also dropped in 2020 but, in contrast to charitable giving, remains lower than it was in pre-pandemic surveys. While lower today than in recent years, the rate of volunteering has been at its current level in the past, most notably during the Great Recession.
...

With respect to donations, the bounce back from 2020 appears to be confined mostly to secular giving. Forty-four percent of Americans say they gave money to religious organizations in the past year, unchanged from 2020, which was the lowest in Gallup's trend by a significant margin.

Meanwhile, 74% say they gave money to another charitable cause, up from 64% a year ago and essentially the same as the 75% who did so in 2013 and 2017.

Over time, as formal church membership has declined, so too have donations to religious organizations. The 44% of U.S. adults donating to a religious organization nearly matches the 47% who belong to a church, synagogue, mosque or temple.

Civic Virtue and the 1918-19 Pandemic

Michael Apfeldorf at the Library of Congress.

In 1918, the United States faced one of the worst public health challenges in its history. An influenza pandemic – also known as the Spanish flu – infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide, killing 20-50 million people, including hundreds of thousands of Americans.

In response to that crisis, the American Red Cross mobilized countless Americans to assist their fellow citizens. Historical primary sources provide examples of civic virtue–that is, of citizens dedicating themselves to the common welfare, even at the cost of their own interests.

Precautions taken in Seattle, Wash., during the Spanish Influenza Epidemic would not permit anyone to ride on the street cars without wearing a mask. 260,000 of these were made by the Seattle Chapter of the Red Cross which consisted of 120 workers, in three days.

“Need Red Cross Workers to Make More Flu Masks,” The Seattle star., October 26, 1918

The Public Health Nurse She answers humanity’s call : Your Red Cross membership makes her work possible

...Some possible sources include:

• “Red Cross Opens Influenza Hospital“ – an article asking citizens to donate food to the hospital.
• “The Public Health Nurse: She answers humanity’s call” – a poster inviting citizens to donate money to support community nurses.
• “Many Women Nursing; More Badly Needed” – an appeal by the Red Cross Influenza Committee to fill an urgent nursing shortage.
• “Need Red Cross Workers to Make More Flu Masks” – a call for volunteers to make flu masks. (On the same page, “Flu Nurse Dies as Martyr to Disease” illustrates the extent to which many volunteers sacrificed.)

Youth, Politics, Protest, and Community Service

Samuel J. Abrams at RealClearEducation writes that students have only modest interest in politics and protest.

Six decades of data from UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) supports this line of thinking.

HERI has regularly presented a list of “objectives” to be achieved in college to incoming students who were asked if they were “essential” or “very important.” When asked about “keeping up to date with political affairs,” for instance, 57% of students on average thought this was essential or very important throughout the 1960s. This figure dropped significantly in the 1970s to 46% and a few points lower to an average of 43% in the 1980s.

By the 1990s, interest in politics waned even more to 37% and from 2000 to the 2015, the number slipped a few points more to 35% – a figure 20 points lower than the 1960s. By 2015, the figure ticked up a bit with the generational change on campus, and by 2017, the figure climbed to 48%....

HERI went further and asked the same students about performing volunteer or community service work. This is, of course, a different way to have political influence and the data show that there has been a steady increase from 1990, when only 17% believed that there was a “very good chance’ that they will engage in service, compared to 37% in 2017 –an increase of almost 118%.

Finally, incoming students were also asked about whether they intended to “participate in student protests or demonstrations” between 1967 and 2015, and that number has remained low over the past five decades. Only about 6% of incoming students on average said that there is a “very good chance” that they will protest. This figure vacillated between about 3.5% and 8% – but never crossed the 9% line, revealing that incoming college students are not inclined to be as radically engaged as the media often portrays them – and they weren’t so inclined even in the 1960s when the U.S. was going through massive socio-political change. Moreover, these protest statistics have barely changed even when other measures of political and social engagement have significantly shifted over time.

Giving Tuesday

Jessie Li at Axios:

Most Americans have donated their time and their money to social causes and charities in the last year, according to an Axios-SurveyMonkey poll on philanthropy that breaks down the most popular charitable giving causes.

The bottom line: Education tops the list of causes Americans have supported, followed by human services and health — but they give less to the arts and international affairs.

The big picture: Education is the top cause for both millennials (46%) and Gen X (42%). Gen Z supports health causes most (47%), while Boomers support religion (41%) more than other causes.

International affairs ranks last in giving for all age groups, with only 6% of Americans saying that they’ve donated to related causes in the last 12 months.

A June report from Giving USA:

Amid a complex climate for charitable giving, American individuals, bequests, foundations and corporations gave an estimated $427.71 billion to U.S. charities in 2018, according to Giving USA 2019: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for theYear 2018.

Total charitable giving rose 0.7% measured in current dollars over the revised total of $424.74 billion contributed in 2017. Adjusted for inflation, total giving declined 1.7%. (Please see below for a more detailed breakdown of the numbers for each philanthropic source and sector.)

...
A number of competing factors in the economic and public policy environments may have affected donors’ decisions in 2018, shifting some previous giving patterns. Many economic variables that shape giving, such as personal income, had relatively strong growth, while the stock market decline in late 2018 may have had a dampening effect. The policy environment also likely influenced some donors’ behavior. One important shift in the 2018 giving landscape is the drop in the number of individuals and households who itemize various types of deductions on their tax returns. This shift came in response to the federal tax policy change that doubled the standard deduction. More than 45 million households itemized deductions in 2016. Numerous studies suggest that number may have dropped to approximately 16 to 20 million households in 2018, reducing an incentive for charitable giving.

Religion: "Nothing in Particular"

The 2018 GSS was just released and there's some big news. Those of "no religion" (23.1%) are statistically the same size as evangelicals (22.8%). There was also a small resurgence of mainline Protestants, while Catholics are down 3% in the last four years. pic.twitter.com/uiyDSe7M6f

— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) March 20, 2019

Ryan Burge at Religion News Service:

The 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study asked respondents if they had engaged in one of five activities: attended a local political meeting, put up a political yard sign, donated money to a candidate/campaign, volunteered for a political campaign or given blood.

Guess which group was the least likely to check any of those boxes?

The “nothing in particulars.”

According to the CCES 2018, nearly two-thirds of the “nothing in particulars” had participated in none of the five activities in the past 12 months. That was the highest of any of the groups in the survey.

Education, rather than religion, might play a role. It is possible that lower levels of education may account for lower levels of social capital and civic involvement.

However, at each level of education, the “nothing in particular” group is less likely to engage in activities than the American public at large.

 In sum, we have a group that currently comprises 20%  of all Americans, and is growing at an unbelievably rapid pace. This group has the lowest level of education of any religious group, and “nothing in particulars” are less likely to engage in political or social activity than the average American.

As a social scientist, I find this represents a troubling confluence of factors.

By all measures, “nothing in particulars” appear to be a growing segment of society that is “checked out.” They don’t obtain high levels of education, they don’t get involved in the political process and they don’t affiliate with a religious group. In addition, they are three times more likely to say their political partisanship is “other” as well. They are adrift in modern society, refusing to be labeled by a religious group or a political party.

What Makes a Good Citizen?

John Gramlich at Pew:

In a Pew Research Center survey in early 2018, around three-quarters of Americans (74%) said voting in elections was very important to what it means to be a good citizen, and around seven-in-ten said the same about paying taxes (71%) and always following the law (69%). But Democrats and Republicans – as well as younger and older adults – didn’t see eye to eye on all the traits and behaviors associated with good citizenship.

In addition to voting, paying taxes and following the law, a majority of Americans said several other traits were very important to good citizenship, including serving on a jury if called (61%); respecting the opinions of others who disagree (61%); and participating in the U.S. census every decade (60%). (The survey was conducted before the Commerce Department announced it would add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census – a decision blocked by the Supreme Court last week.)

Smaller shares said it was very important to good citizenship for Americans to volunteer to help others (52%), know the Pledge of Allegiance (50%), follow what happens in government and politics (49%) and protest when government actions are believed to be wrong (45%).

And although there will be plenty of them out on July Fourth, displaying the American flag ranked at the bottom of the list: A little over a third of U.S. adults (36%) viewed this as very important to good citizenship, though an additional 26% said it was somewhat important.

Demographic Difference on Civic Participation

Aleksandra Sandstrom and Becka A. Alper at Pew:

Nearly six-in-ten Americans (57%) participate in some type of community group or organization, including about one-in-ten (11%) who say they participate in four or more community groups, according to a new analysis of data from a December 2017 Pew Research Center survey.

...
 Generally, adults who are better educated and wealthier are more likely to be involved in some community or other group. A majority of college graduates are active in at least one community group, while only half of those with a high school education say the same (70% vs. 48%). And two-thirds of those who have a household income of at least $75,000 say they are active in at least one community group, compared with 47% of those with a household income of $30,000 or less.

There also are some differences along age and racial/ethnic lines. Notably, adults who have reached retirement age are more likely to be involved – two-thirds of Americans ages 65 and older say they participate in at least one community organization, compared with 55% of younger adults. And blacks (62%) and whites (59%) are more likely than Hispanics (49%) to say they are active in at least one community group.

Among religious groups, about six-in-ten Protestants (61%) say they participate in at least one group, with 12% saying they are active in four or more organizations. And about seven-in-ten Jews (72%) say they participate in at least one community group or organization, including a quarter (24%) who participate in four or more. By comparison, fewer Catholics (53%) and religiously unaffiliated adults (51%) say they participate in one or more community groups

American Dream, Religion, Civic Life

AEI survey on the American Dream:

• While most Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, they are optimistic about life in their communities and their ability to achieve the American dream.
• Most people say their neighbors get along well and are willing to help each other, even though fewer report regularly helping their neighbors or trying to work together to fix or improve something in their neighborhood.
• Americans derive a sense of community from their friends, neighborhoods, and hometowns more than their ideology or ethnic identity. Regular interaction with friends and neighbors produces a strong sense of community.
• People who live close to an ample number of amenities such as schools, parks, libraries, and restaurants are happier with their communities, more engaged with their neighbors, and less lonely.
• While loneliness is a significant problem, it may not be the epidemic that some claim.

From the report:

The SCS [AEI Survey on Community and Society] asks Americans about their involvement in a variety of organizations. The question is specific, asking people whether they have been active members in the past year, “by which we mean you do volunteer work, participate, and/or attend meetings and events, doing more than just donating, paying dues or following on social media” in any of 11 different types of organizations. As Figure 7 shows, 44 percent indicate no active membership in these types of groups. A quarter have been active in only one type of group in the past year, and 29 percent have been active in two or more.

Membership in a religious organization is most common, with 22 percent saying they have been active members, followed by 14 percent who have been active in an education- or school-based organization, 13 percent in a volunteer public service organization, 12 percent in a business or professional organization, 11 percent in an organization for hobbies or cultural activities, and 10 percent in an athletic team or outdoor activities group. Fewer than 10 percent report active membership in each of the other types of organizations mentioned.

...
The SCS asks respondents whether they had done any of nine different political activities in the past two years. (See Figure 9.) Seventy-one percent report that they voted regularly in national elections, and 61 percent say they voted regularly in local elections. Thirty-one percent say they publicly expressed their support for a political campaign on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media. Around a quarter say they contacted any elected official or politician in the past two years (27 percent); asked their friends, neighbors, family, or coworkers to support a candidate or political position (26 percent); or displayed a political or campaign poster, bumper sticker, lawn sign, or clothing (24 percent). Twenty percent say they attended a rally, protest, speech, or campaign event, and 18 percent say they contributed money to a candidate running for office or a group working to affect public policy. Twelve percent say they worked or volunteered for a political party, candidate, or group that tried to influence policy.  

 From Pew:

People who are active in religious congregations tend to be happier and more civically engaged than either religiously unaffiliated adults or inactive members of religious groups, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of survey data from the United States and more than two dozen other countries.

Religiously active people also tend to smoke and drink less, but they are nothealthier in terms of exercise frequency and rates of obesity. Nor, in most countries, are highly religious people more likely to rate themselves as being in very good overall health – though the U.S. is among the possible exceptions.

...
In the U.S., 58% of actively religious adults say they are also active in at least one other (nonreligious) kind of voluntary organization, including charity groups, sports clubs or labor unions. Only about half of all inactively religious adults (51%) and fewer than half of the unaffiliated (39%) say the same.7

...
In addition, a higher percentage of actively religious adults in the United States (69%) say they always vote in national elections than do either inactives (59%) or the unaffiliated (48%).

The Working Class, Religion, and Community Service

David Brooks at NYT:

Washington think tanks are undergoing a fundamental evolution. A lot of them, like the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution, were built to advise parties that no longer exist. They were built for a style of public debate — based on social science evidence and congressional hearings that are more than just show trials — that no longer exists. Many people at these places have discovered that they have more in common with one another than they do with the extremists on their own sides.

So suddenly there is a flurry of working together across ideological lines. Next week, for example, the group Opportunity America, with Brookings and A.E.I., will release a bipartisan agenda called “Work, Skills, Community: Restoring Opportunity for the Working Class.”

Written by a wide array of scholars, the report starts with the truth that the working class has been mostly ignored by the rest of society. Government has welfare programs to serve the poor and they have programs like 529 savings accounts to subsidize the rich. But there’s very little for families making, say, $50,000 a year.

From the report:

The role of faith in working-class families is well-documented. As Robert Jones, the CEO of the polling firm PPRI, has explained it, “Churches have served, for most of the nation’s life, as pipelines to all kinds of civic engagement—and not just because they hand out voter-registration cards or have them in the lobby. We actually see a link between all kinds of civic activity and church activity.”Yet, participation in this once-central institution has declined greatly, with weekly church attendance falling from 40 percent in the 1970s to 28 percent in the 2000s among those with a high school degree or some college (figure 19).

Mirroring this decline in churchgoing, the working class is also participating less actively in other civic institutions (figure 20). According to a PPRI survey, white working-class Americans, which they define as people without a college degree who are paid by the hour or the job, have lower rates of participation in sports teams, book clubs and neighborhood associations than their more-educated peers (30 percent to 49 percent).52 Our definition of working class includes people from all races without bachelor’s degrees, and among them too, rates of civic engagement—participation in service, school or community associations, or recreational or religious organizations—are all distressingly low and more like rates for low-income than high-income adults. According to data from the Civic Engagement Supplement to the Current Population Survey, no more than 15 percent of working-class men and women participate annually in any of these activities.

National Service

Gallup:

Almost half (49%) of Americans favor requiring young men and women to give a year of service to the nation. But a majority (57%) of the group most likely to be affected -- those under the age of 30 -- oppose the idea.

The idea of mandatory national service has been floated numerous times by think tanks and opinion writers over the past decade and a half, but it has never become a major issue in national politics. U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel unsuccessfully pushed a version of the idea in every legislative session from 2003 to 2015; at one point, it even reached the House floor, where it was defeated by a vote of 402-2.

Though the idea has never garnered much attention as a national policy proposal, there is support for the concept among segments of the public. A majority of Republicans, including independents who lean Republican, favor it (57%), as do men (57%) and those 65 or older (66%).

Religion and Social Capital

New data from Pew confirm other posts:  religion adds immensely to social capital in the United States.

A new Pew Research Center study of the ways religion influences the daily lives of Americans finds that people who are highly religious are more engaged with their extended families, more likely to volunteer, more involved in their communities and generally happier with the way things are going in their lives.

For example, nearly half of highly religious Americans – defined as those who say they pray every day and attend religious services each week – gather with extended family at least once or twice a month.1 By comparison, just three-in-ten Americans who are less religious gather as frequently with their extended families. Roughly two-thirds of highly religious adults (65%) say they have donated money, time or goods to help the poor in the past week, compared with 41% who are less religious. And 40% of highly religious U.S. adults describe themselves as “very happy,” compared with 29% of those who are less religious.

...
Of course, survey data like these cannot prove that believing certain actions are obligatory for Christians actually causes Christians to behave in particular ways. The causal arrow could point in the other direction: It may be easier for those who regularly engage in particular behaviors to cite those behaviors as essential to their faith. Conversely, it may be harder for those who do not regularly engage in particular activities (such as helping the poor) to describe those activities as essential to their faith. Nevertheless, the survey data suggest that Christians are more likely to live healthy lives, work on behalf of the poor and behave in environmentally conscious ways if they consider these things essential to what it means to be a Christian.

...
Adults who are highly religious are more likely than those who are less religious to say they did volunteer work in the last seven days (45% vs. 28%). Follow-up questions suggest this difference is driven primarily by volunteering through houses of worship.12 Highly religious Americans are more than five times as likely as those who are less religious to say they recently volunteered “mainly through a church or other religious organization” (23% vs. 4%). Similar shares of highly religious and less religious adults say they volunteered through an institution other than a church or house of worship.

About two-thirds of highly religious adults say they donated time, money or goods to help the poor in the past week (65%). Fewer of those who are not highly religious say the same (41%). Christians and Jews are more likely than religious “nones” to say they donated money, goods or time to help the poor and needy in the given time frame. These differences between Christians and Jews on the one hand and religious “nones” on the other persist even after taking into account other potential explanatory variables, such as income, age and education.

Catholicism and Civic Duty

Dotson Rader writes at Parade:

It’s not surprising that the Kennedy tradition of service is steeped in religion: The family is famously Catholic. “Bobby almost was a priest, so he was very religious,” says Jean [Kennedy Smith, sole surviving sibling of JFK]. “We all were, in different ways. Because our parents were.”

Tim Shriver, whose mother, Eunice, was one of Joe and Rose’s nine offspring (his dad, Sargent Shriver, a former U.S. Ambassador to France, ran for vice president in 1972), credits Catholicism for rallying his family to serve not out of obligation, but because of a uniquely sincere desire to help others. “I don’t think ought is enough to sustain a commitment,” he says. “What our Catholic tradition has done well is make you not just ought to help, but want to help—hunger for it. Be hungry for justice, be hungry for healing, be hungry for connection, be hungry for leveling the playing field. That’s more than just a moral imperative. It’s believing that your best self will always be in solidarity with those who are having a hard time.” After all, he adds, “Jesus was all about [taking care of] the poor and the marginalized and then having a party.”

Disturbing Survey on Civic Duty and Civic Virtue

Connie Cass reports at AP  on civic duty and civic virtue.  An AP-GfK poll repeated questions asked in 1984 about: voting, volunteering, serving on a jury, reporting crime, knowing English and keeping informed about news and public issues.

Of the six, only voting and volunteering were embraced about as strongly as three decades ago, when NORC at the University of Chicago posed those questions to Americans on the General Social Survey, but volunteering doesn't rank very high on the list for many.

While just 28 percent say volunteering is "a very important obligation" that a citizen owes the country, three-fourths of Americans consider voting central to citizenship.

...

Young people are feeling less dutiful, or maybe just showing their libertarian streak.
In every category except volunteering, adults under 30 were less likely than their elders to see any obligation, and also felt less obliged than young people of the past.

In 2014 about a fourth of them said there's no duty to keep informed, volunteer or speak English.

Young adults felt the most responsibility about reporting a crime: two-thirds said that's "very important," and the rest were divided between "somewhat important" and "not an obligation."

Still, in 1984, their parents' generation was much more devoted to maintaining law and order, 86 percent of young adults then called reporting crime "very important."
...

Americans don't feel much pressure to keep up with news and public issues anymore.

Only 37 percent think that's very important, down from a majority (56 percent) in 1984.

In fact, a fifth say there's no obligation at all to stay fully informed.

The young are even less likely to feel citizens ought to know what's going on, despite having unprecedented amounts of information at their fingertips.
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Volunteer Firefighters

Our textbook discusses volunteering as an example of civic virtue. At The New York Times, Andrew Brown and Ian Urbina write:

IN most places in America, when a fire breaks out, a volunteer shows up to put it out.
But the ranks of volunteers are dwindling. What was once an iconic part of American life is losing its allure, in part because the work — some would say the calling — is a lot less fun than it used to be.

There are still more than twice as many volunteers as career firefighters. But the number of volunteers has dropped by around 11 percent since the mid-1980s, while the number of career firefighters has grown more than 50 percent, according to the National Fire Protection Association. The allure has diminished because fund-raising now takes up roughly half the time most volunteers spend on duty. It’s also harder to fit in volunteer work. The rise in two-income households often means that there is no stay-at-home parent to run things so the other can dash off for an an emergency. Urbanization and the aging of the rural population are taking their toll as fewer young people are available to replace firefighters who retire.

Federal, state and local officials would like to attract new volunteer recruits. The stakes are particularly high because volunteers save not only lives but money — more than $139.8 billion annually for local governments, according to the fire protection association. The time and training needed to become a certified firefighter have also increased. Federal standards enacted to save firefighters’ lives have unintentionally created a barrier for volunteer service: It now takes hundreds of hours to be certified, and new firefighters often must cover the cost of training.

Giving, Volunteering, and Religion

Our chapter on citizenship and civic culture discusses charity and voluntarism, along with their relationship to religion.  Gallup reports:

The 83% of Americans who say they have donated money in the past year represents those who donated to a religious organization, to another charitable cause, or to both. More specifically, 55% of Americans say they donated money to a religious organization, 75% donated to another charitable cause, and 47% donated to both.

The percentage who have donated to a religious organization is the lowest Gallup has measured to date, with faith-based giving falling nine percentage points since 2005. Donations to other types of charities have been flat since 2005, suggesting the decline in religious donations may be due more to the weakening of Americans' bonds with formal religious institutions rather than to the economy.

In terms of volunteering, 46% of Americans report having given their time to a religious organization and 49% to another type of charitable group. Sixty-five percent donated their time to at least one of these types, and 30% donated to both.

Alex Daniels writes at The Chronicle of Philanthropy:

The more important religion is to a person, the more likely that person is to give to a charity of any kind, according to new research released today.

Among Americans who claim a religious affiliation, the study said, 65 percent give to charity. Among those who do not identify a religious creed, 56 percent make charitable gifts.

About 75 percent of people who frequently attend religious services gave to congregations, and 60 percent gave to religious charities or nonreligious ones. By comparison, fewer than half of people who said they didn’t attend faith services regularly supported any charity, even a even secular one.

“If your goal is to connect with donors, it’s clear that one of the things that matters to them is their religious orientation,” says Shawn Landres, Jumpstart’s chief executive and a co-author of the report.