Americans value community engagement far less than they did a quarter-century ago, according to a new poll from The Wall Street Journal and research group NORC. The survey further found sizable declines in Americans' attachment to other traditional American values, particularly since 2019. (Although the apparent sharpness of this trajectory, if not the poll's assessment of Americans' priorities, may be due to methodical inconsistencies, writes pollster Patrick Ruffini.) Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say traditional values are "very important"—e.g., "patriotism" (59 to 23 percent), religion (53 to 27 percent), and "having children" (38 to 26 percent). Not so for "community involvement," which just 25 percent of Republicans labeled "very important," compared to 32 percent of Democrats (27 percent overall).
"The decline of Americans' participation in local civil society institutions—from churches to school parent groups—may vary year-over-year but must be considered a long-term trend," the American Enterprise Institute's Howard Husock tells Reason. This long-term breakdown of civil society—of local, private associations—largely in lower-class communities and largely since the 1960s, has been well documented in such works as Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone (2000), Charles Murray's Coming Apart (2013), and Timothy P. Carney's Alienated America (2019).
