The Downside of Diversity

A Harvard political scientist finds that diversity hurts civic life. What happens when a liberal scholar unearths an inconvenient truth?

It has become increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnicdiversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals topronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: ourdifferences make us stronger.

But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvardpolitical scientist Robert Putnam—famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000book on declining civic engagement—has found that the greater thediversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less theyvolunteer, the less they give to charity and work on communityprojects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one anotherabout half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. Thestudy, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found thatvirtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diversesettings.

“The extent of the effect is shocking,” says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist.

The study comes at a time when the future of the American meltingpot is the focus of intense political debate, from immigration torace-based admissions to schools, and it poses challenges to advocateson all sides of the issues. The study is already being cited by someconservatives as proof of the harm large-scale immigration causes tothe nation's social fabric. But with demographic trends already pushingthe nation inexorably toward greater diversity, the real question mayyet lie ahead: how to handle the unsettling social changes thatPutnam's research predicts.

“We can't ignore the findings,” says Ali Noorani, executive directorof the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. “The bigquestion we have to ask ourselves is, what do we do about it; what arethe next steps?”

The study is part of a fascinating new portrait of diversityemerging from recent scholarship. Diversity, it shows, makes usuncomfortable—but discomfort, it turns out, isn't always a bad thing.Unease with differences helps explain why teams of engineers fromdifferent cultures may be ideally suited to solve a vexing problem.Culture clashes can produce a dynamic give-and-take, generating asolution that may have eluded a group of people with more similarbackgrounds and approaches. At the same time, though, Putnam's workadds to a growing body of research indicating that more diversepopulations seem to extend themselves less on behalf of collectiveneeds and goals.

His findings on the downsides of diversity have also posed achallenge for Putnam, a liberal academic whose own values put himsquarely in the pro-diversity camp. Suddenly finding himself the bearerof bad news, Putnam has struggled with how to present his work. Hegathered the initial raw data in 2000 and issued a press release thefollowing year outlining the results. He then spent several yearstesting other possible explanations.

When he finally published a detailed scholarly analysis in June inthe journal Scandinavian Political Studies, he faced criticism forstraying from data into advocacy. His paper argues strongly that thenegative effects of diversity can be remedied, and says historysuggests that ethnic diversity may eventually fade as a sharp line ofsocial demarcation.

“Having aligned himself with the central planners intent onsustaining such social engineering, Putnam concludes the facts with astern pep talk,” wrote conservative commentator Ilana Mercer, in arecent Orange County Register op-ed titled “Greater diversity equalsmore misery.”

Putnam has long staked out ground as both a researcher and a civicplayer, someone willing to describe social problems and then have ahand in addressing them. He says social science should be“simultaneously rigorous and relevant,” meeting high research standardswhile also “speaking to concerns of our fellow citizens.” But on atopic as charged as ethnicity and race, Putnam worries that many peoplehear only what they want to.

“It would be unfortunate if a politically correct progressivism wereto deny the reality of the challenge to social solidarity posed bydiversity,” he writes in the new report. “It would be equallyunfortunate if an ahistorical and ethnocentric conservatism were todeny that addressing that challenge is both feasible and desirable.”

. . .

Putnam is the nation's premier guru of civic engagement. Afterstudying civic life in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, Putnam turned hisattention to the US, publishing an influential journal article on civicengagement in 1995 that he expanded five years later into thebest-selling “Bowling Alone.” The book sounded a national wake-up callon what Putnam called a sharp drop in civic connections amongAmericans. It won him audiences with presidents Bill Clinton and GeorgeW. Bush, and made him one of the country's best known social scientists.

Putnam claims the US has experienced a pronounced decline in “socialcapital,” a term he helped popularize. Social capital refers to thesocial networks—whether friendships or religious congregations orneighborhood associations—that he says are key indicators of civicwell-being. When social capital is high, says Putnam, communities arebetter places to live. Neighborhoods are safer; people are healthier;and more citizens vote.

The results of his new study come from a survey Putnam directedamong residents in 41 US communities, including Boston. Residents weresorted into the four principal categories used by the US Census: black,white, Hispanic, and Asian. They were asked how much they trusted theirneighbors and those of each racial category, and questioned about along list of civic attitudes and practices, including their views onlocal government, their involvement in community projects, and theirfriendships. What emerged in more diverse communities was a bleakpicture of civic desolation, affecting everything from politicalengagement to the state of social ties.

Putnam knew he had provocative findings on his hands. He worriedabout coming under some of the same liberal attacks that greeted DanielPatrick Moynihan's landmark 1965 report on the social costs associatedwith the breakdown of the black family. There is always the risk ofbeing pilloried as the bearer of “an inconvenient truth,” says Putnam.

After releasing the initial results in 2001, Putnam says he spenttime “kicking the tires really hard” to be sure the study had it right.Putnam realized, for instance, that more diverse communities tended tobe larger, have greater income ranges, higher crime rates, and moremobility among their residents—all factors that could depress socialcapital independent of any impact ethnic diversity might have.

“People would say, ‘I bet you forgot about X,’” Putnam says of thestring of suggestions from colleagues. “There were 20 or 30 X's.”

But even after statistically taking them all into account, theconnection remained strong: Higher diversity meant lower socialcapital. In his findings, Putnam writes that those in more diversecommunities tend to “distrust their neighbors, regardless of the colorof their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worstfrom their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less tocharity and work on community projects less often, to register to voteless, to agitate for social reform more but have less faith that theycan actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of thetelevision.”

“People living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’—that is, to pull in like a turtle,” Putnam writes.

In documenting that hunkering down, Putnam challenged the twodominant schools of thought on ethnic and racial diversity, the“contact” theory and the “conflict” theory. Under the contact theory,more time spent with those of other backgrounds leads to greaterunderstanding and harmony between groups. Under the conflict theory,that proximity produces tension and discord.

Putnam's findings reject both theories. In more diverse communities,he says, there were neither great bonds formed across group lines norheightened ethnic tensions, but a general civic malaise. And in perhapsthe most surprising result of all, levels of trust were not only lowerbetween groups in more diverse settings, but even among members of thesame group.

“Diversity, at least in the short run,” he writes, “seems to bring out the turtle in all of us.”

The overall findings may be jarring during a time when it's becomecommonplace to sing the praises of diverse communities, but researchersin the field say they shouldn't be.

“It's an important addition to a growing body of evidence on thechallenges created by diversity,” says Harvard economist Edward Glaeser.

In a recent study, Glaeser and colleague Alberto Alesinademonstrated that roughly half the difference in social welfarespending between the US and Europe—Europe spends far more—can beattributed to the greater ethnic diversity of the US population.Glaeser says lower national social welfare spending in the US is a“macro” version of the decreased civic engagement Putnam found in morediverse communities within the country.

Economists Matthew Kahn of UCLA and Dora Costa of MIT reviewed 15recent studies in a 2003 paper, all of which linked diversity withlower levels of social capital. Greater ethnic diversity was linked,for example, to lower school funding, census response rates, and trustin others. Kahn and Costa's own research documented higher desertionrates in the Civil War among Union Army soldiers serving in companieswhose soldiers varied more by age, occupation, and birthplace.

Birds of different feathers may sometimes flock together, but theyare also less likely to look out for one another. “Everyone is a littleself-conscious that this is not politically correct stuff,” says Kahn.

. . .

So how to explain New York, London, Rio de Janiero, Los Angeles—thegreat melting-pot cities that drive the world's creative and financialeconomies?

The image of civic lassitude dragging down more diverse communitiesis at odds with the vigor often associated with urban centers, whereethnic diversity is greatest. It turns out there is a flip side to thediscomfort diversity can cause. If ethnic diversity, at least in theshort run, is a liability for social connectedness, a parallel line ofemerging research suggests it can be a big asset when it comes todriving productivity and innovation. In high-skill workplace settings,says Scott Page, the University of Michigan political scientist, thedifferent ways of thinking among people from different cultures can bea boon.

“Because they see the world and think about the world differently than you, that's challenging,” says Page, author of The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies.“But by hanging out with people different than you, you're likely toget more insights. Diverse teams tend to be more productive.”

In other words, those in more diverse communities may do morebowling alone, but the creative tensions unleashed by those differencesin the workplace may vault those same places to the cutting edge of theeconomy and of creative culture.

Page calls it the “diversity paradox.” He thinks the contrastingpositive and negative effects of diversity can coexist in communities,but “there's got to be a limit.” If civic engagement falls off too far,he says, it's easy to imagine the positive effects of diversitybeginning to wane as well. “That's what's unsettling about hisfindings,” Page says of Putnam's new work.

Meanwhile, by drawing a portrait of civic engagement in which morehomogeneous communities seem much healthier, some of Putnam's worstfears about how his results could be used have been realized. A streamof conservative commentary has begun—from places like the ManhattanInstitute and “The American Conservative”—highlighting the harm thestudy suggests will come from large-scale immigration. But Putnam sayshe's also received hundreds of complimentary emails laced with bigotedlanguage. “It certainly is not pleasant when David Duke's website hailsme as the guy who found out racism is good,” he says.

In the final quarter of his paper, Putnam puts the diversitychallenge in a broader context by describing how social identity canchange over time. Experience shows that social divisions can eventuallygive way to “more encompassing identities” that create a “new, morecapacious sense of ‘we,’” he writes.

Growing up in the 1950s in small Midwestern town, Putnam knew thereligion of virtually every member of his high school graduating classbecause, he says, such information was crucial to the question of “whowas a possible mate or date.” The importance of marrying within one'sfaith, he says, has largely faded since then, at least among manymainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.

While acknowledging that racial and ethnic divisions may prove morestubborn, Putnam argues that such examples bode well for the long-termprospects for social capital in a multiethnic America.

In his paper, Putnam cites the work done by Page and others, anduses it to help frame his conclusion that increasing diversity inAmerica is not only inevitable, but ultimately valuable and enriching.As for smoothing over the divisions that hinder civic engagement,Putnam argues that Americans can help that process along throughtargeted efforts. He suggests expanding support for English-languageinstruction and investing in community centers and other places thatallow for “meaningful interaction across ethnic lines.”

Some critics have found his prescriptions underwhelming. And inoffering ideas for mitigating his findings, Putnam has drawn scorn forstepping out of the role of dispassionate researcher. “You're justsupposed to tell your peers what you found,” says John Leo, seniorfellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. “I don'texpect academics to fret about these matters.”

But fretting about the state of American civic health is exactlywhat Putnam has spent more than a decade doing. While continuing toresearch questions involving social capital, he has directed theSaguaro Seminar, a project he started at Harvard's Kennedy School ofGovernment that promotes efforts throughout the country to increasecivic connections in communities.

“Social scientists are both scientists and citizens,” says AlanWolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American PublicLife at Boston College, who sees nothing wrong in Putnam's efforts toaffect some of the phenomena he studies.

Wolfe says what is unusual is that Putnam has published findings asa social scientist that are not the ones he would have wished for as acivic leader. There are plenty of social scientists, says Wolfe, whonever produce research results at odds with their own worldview.

“The problem too often,” says Wolfe, “is people are never uncomfortable about their findings.”

Michael Jonas is acting editor of CommonWealth magazine, published by MassINC, a nonpartisan public-policy think tank in Boston.

Robert Putnam is a faculty associate at the Weatherhead Center and Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy.