Problem: An Opportunity Gap and Declining Community?
Putnam has for the last few years been collecting data about the growing gap in opportunities among socioeconomic classes of American children. In decades past, parents with high school educations invested money and time in their children at much the same level as college-graduate parents, but today a large gap has grown in both resources, favoring, of course, the more affluent families. Specifically, the more comfortable class of children receive about one hour per day more time with their parents than do less advantaged children. A generation ago, Putnam says, participation in extracurricular activities varied little by social class, but today participation has risen sharply for affluent children while falling sharply among those less well-off. One of the results of this opportunity divide is that children of the well-off express increasing trust in those around them while that trust has "collapsed" among the less well-off children.140
Likewise, young products of affluent America have steadily deepened their community engagement (going to church more, better connecting to their parents, volunteering) while the less affluent young whites have withdrawn or never undertaken that engagement. That disparity in involvement is not present among young blacks, but the overall engagement gap between whites and blacks is wide.141
Questions
1. Is Putnam correct about
(a) declining social capital in America and
(b) a growing opportunity gap between affluent and less well-off children? Explain.
2. American Dan Lawton commenting on his first trip to Africa: In Ghana, I have danced, eaten, and spoken with more strangers in six weeks than I would have in America in six years, And this paradox-that despite its material wealth and technological might America is so standoffish and lonely-has been burning a hole in my head.142
a. Do you agree that Americans are "standoffish and lonely"?
b. If so, do you have any explanation for that condition?