Between the 1970s and 1990s, the number of Americans who attended a single local civic meeting in a year plummeted by 40%. The number who went to a single meeting of a club – say, the Rotary or a local tennis team – dropped by 50%. Even the number of picnics Americans joined dropped by 60%. And as the social scientist Robert Putnam has been telling us for decades, this matters – in fact, it may be a question of life or death.
That’s because, as Putnam has told audiences, “your chances of dying over the next year are cut in half by joining one group.” And it’s not just a matter of our own health – it’s about the health of democracy itself.
