The community impact of 9/11 - and its usefulness

[Taxloss]

I'm writing a 2000-word "think piece" for a magazine and have been researching the changing way the UK government views neighbourhoods (it's fascinating).

Anyway, I stumbled across this report, dated April 2002, and drafted by the Policy and Information Unit of the PM's office. In total, it's a lot of dry-ish social theory about restoring community spirit.

Buried in the middle is a remarkable section headed "9/11: A Dramatic Twist" (paragraphs 113-118, starting at the bottom of page 49).

Not only does this contain some fascinating statistical analysis, but also a bit of insight into the domestic reaction of our respective governments.

Here is the section:

Post-9/11: a dramatic twist

113. In Bowling Alone (Taxloss interjects: a 1998 book saying that community structures in the USA are breaking down), Putnam speculated that restoring civic engagement: “would be eased by a palpable national crisis, like war or depression or natural disaster, but for better and for worse, America at the dawn of the new century faces no such galvanizing crisis”. With the events of September 11, 2001 this hypothesis was sadly put to the test.

114. Social capital surveys (Putnam, 2002) completed were in the months following the attack have found that interest in public affairs grew, especially among younger people many of whom had previously shown strong disengagement (27 per cent up, compared with 8 per cent among older respondents). Trust in “the people running your country” grew, by 19 percent in younger people and 4 percent among older ones. And 51 percent expressed greater confidence in the Federal government than they had a year earlier.

115. Trust rose 19 percent in local government, 14 percent in the police, and 10 percent in neighbours. Strikingly, trust in people of other races also rose by 11 percent, though trust in Arabs lagged behind other groups.


116. Changes in behaviour were more modest. There were 5 to 7 percent increases in giving blood, volunteering, working on local community projects, and attending political meetings.

117. There was little or no change in attending clubs or churches or in giving, and informal socialising was actually down 6 percent – possibly reflecting that television watching was up 16%, an increase of half an hour a day (to 3.4 hours on average).

118. In sum, the events of 9/11 appear to have sparked a sharp upturn in the trust Americans have in one another, but has led to only modest changes in behaviour. The White House consulted Putnam extensively in this period, a fact reflected in President Bush’s State of the Union Address in January this year which announced the creation of a large citizen corps and urged Americans to do “something good” for each other.

Apologies is this is common knowledge, a dupe, or simply very dull.

Link to the full paper (warning, it's a PDF and 81 pages long):

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/su/social%20capital/socialcapital.pdf