Contacts: Richard Small/Martha Cid, M Booth & Associates, 212-481-7000
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PACE POLL SHOWS MORE NEW YORKERS ARE INVOLVED
IN PROTEST POLITICS THAN IN OTHER CIVIC ACTIVITIES
New Yorkers May Reside in One of the World's Most Diverse Cities,
But They Trail Americans Nationally in the Diversity of Their Friends
NEW YORK, January 14, 2004 - New Yorkers appear to favor protest politics over other forms of civic participation, and have a high degree of interracial trust, but they trail Americans nationwide in the diversity of their friends, according to findings of the Pace Poll, the independent center for survey research at Pace University.
The latest survey documents for the first time New York City's "social capital," the varying levels of trustful relationships among people in a community. By conducting the survey, the Pace Poll joins a national initiative to study social capital and civic engagement. The survey instrument, called the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS), was designed by the Saguaro Seminar, a project at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University that builds upon the work of Professor Robert D. Putnam. Dr. Putnam is the author of the signal book Bowling Alone (2000).
The city's health and social wealth
"Social capital is an asset that a community accrues when its citizenry is interconnected, trusting and neighborly," said Jonathan A. Trichter, Director of the Pace Poll. "Holding certain demographic variables constant, social capital correlates more precisely with core community characteristics - including crime and the quality of public schools - than many other factors, including the ratio of civilians to police on the street, or students to teachers in the classroom."
According to the Pace Poll findings, more than a quarter of New Yorkers (26%) qualify as high-level civic participants, as measured by activities like attending a meeting or rally and working on a community project. By this measure and according to data from similar surveys conducted in 2000 both nationwide and in other urban areas, the Pace Poll findings suggest that New Yorkers outstrip Los Angelinos (20%) and Americans in general (24%), but trail Bostonians (30%).
New York is a tale of two cities: 45% of Manhattan residents are high-level civic activists, but only 26% of Brooklyn residents, 21% of Queens residents, 18% of Bronx residents and 11% of Staten Island residents put forth the same civic effort. Furthermore, almost half of New Yorkers 18 to 25 (49%) and 40% of Latinos suffer from low-level civic participation, the survey found, based on attendance at civic meetings and work on community projects.
However, 39% of New Yorkers qualify as high-level political participants, based on measures such as voting frequency, political knowledge, and newspaper readership. This compares to 30% of residents nationally and 25% of residents in Los Angeles, the survey found. Again, residents of Boston rank higher - 43% qualify as high-level political participants.
Civic dissenters
Consistent with its reputation for pugnacity, New York edges out other cities in social dissent: 38% of city residents participate in protest politics often, compared with 27% of U.S. residents. Protest politics is defined as marches, demonstrations, boycotts, rallies, actions that lead to local reform, or labor and ethnically related group action.
Here, too, Manhattan residents are the most active New Yorkers. More than half of Manhattan residents (56%) have signed a petition in the last year. More than one in three (35%) have attended a political meeting, more than four in ten (41%) have worked on a community project, and more than one in four (26%) have participated in a demonstration, boycott or march.
According to the SCCBS Social Trust Index - a part of the survey which measures trust of one's neighbors, co-workers, shop clerks, co-religionists, police, and the city's media - 28% of New Yorkers qualify as having a high degree of social trust, compared with 22% of Bostonians and 21% of Los Angelinos. But when asked about their "community leaders," the Pace Poll found the majority of black men (52%) and Latina women (54%) think the people "running my community don't really care much what happens to me." Also, blacks and Latinos are the most likely New Yorkers to distrust the city's media.
Interracial trust but less diverse circle of friends
New Yorkers appear to display greater interracial trust than Americans in general, according to the SCCBS Inter-racial Trust index, which examines the extent to which different racial groups trust one another. Almost a third (32%) of New Yorkers qualify as having a high amount of inter-racial trust, compared to 27% of residents nationwide. Some 70% of black New Yorkers say they trust whites - the same percentage of blacks who trust blacks. A higher percentage of black New Yorkers, 73%, trust Latinos than the percentage of Latinos, 66%, who trust blacks; 67% of Latino New Yorkers trust whites.
Despite the city's interracial trust, just 27% of white New Yorkers would look favorably on a close relative marrying an African American or Asian; 29% of whites would favor a close relative marrying a Latino. Meanwhile, 57% of blacks and 45% of Latinos would favor a close relative marrying a white person. Only 36% of all New Yorkers would favor a close family member's marriage to an Arab American.
Though New York's population is among the most diverse in the country, New Yorkers do not lead the nation when it comes to the diversity of their friends, as measured by how many different kinds of friends New Yorkers report among 11 possibilities, including a manual laborer, welfare recipient, homosexual, or person of a different faith or ethnicity. Whereas one in five (20%) residents nationwide qualifies as having a high degree of diversity among his or her friends, only 15% of New Yorkers similarly do.
The macher meter
Group involvement is a principal way that people acquire or refine their civic skills, broaden their social networks, and consequently improve their communities. Borrowing a word from Yiddish, sociologists often refer to group joiners as machers, and one qualifies as a macher via formal group participation.
New Yorkers seem about as likely (28%) to be involved in civic groups as people nationwide (32%), residents of Boston (29%), and residents of Los Angeles (29%). New Yorkers' favorite type of group to join is a charity or social welfare organization (29% of New Yorkers are involved in one). Their second favorite is an arts organization: 26% of New Yorkers hold memberships in groups involved in literary or artistic discussion, or groups dedicated to dance or musical performance. Among Manhattan residents, 43% do.
New Yorkers are less inclined than other Americans to engage in the activities of faith-based institutions, the survey found. Less than one in five city residents (19%) qualify as high-level faith-based civic participants, compared to almost one-third (32%) of Americans nationwide and 27% of Los Angeles residents.
Losing in schmoozing
Contrary to the received wisdom, which says New Yorkers invented the art of schmoozing, city residents appear less likely than U.S. residents to be adept at making informal social connections: 30% of New Yorkers qualify as "big-time schmoozers," compared to 33% of U.S. citizens. But New Yorkers are ahead of Boston residents (28%), and Angelinos (26%).
By borough, the city's top schmoozers reside in Queens (38% are "big-time schmoozers"), followed by the Bronx (30%), Staten Island (27%) and then Manhattan and Brooklyn (26%).
Les Miserables
Knowing how New York compares with the rest of America in social capital and that social capital correlates with personal happiness, we should expect New Yorkers to be a little more miserable than most Americans. They are. While almost two in five (38%) Americans describe themselves as "very happy," less than a quarter (24%) of New Yorkers say they are.
About the Pace Poll
These results are based on telephone interviews conducted from November 18 to December 7, 2003, with 616 citywide residents of New York 18 years of age or older. The sample consisted of phone numbers selected via random digit dial (RDD) from among exchanges chosen to make sure each region was represented in proportion to its population. In addition, the data were weighted to conform to the United States Census.
The results of the survey are statistically significant within a ± 4% margin of error at a 95% level of confidence. Error margins increase for cross-tabulations. In some cases the questions are versioned (only half the sample was asked the question). Thus, the significance of differences will vary from question to question. Though the Pace Poll adheres to strict methodological standards, the practical elements of fielding any survey can introduce additional sources of error.
The SCCBS survey is the emerging standard for measuring social capital and has been fielded nationwide among 3,000 respondents, as well as regionally among an additional 26,200 residents from 40 distinct localities across 29 states.
The Pace Poll is an interdisciplinary center for survey research on social, political and economic issues. By regularly measuring local, regional and national public opinion on both long-standing and timely topics, the Pace Poll aims to help public opinion play a more visible role in the open discussion of current affairs. Established in 2003 and backed by the resources of Pace University, the Pace Poll is one of a number of the University's central initiatives to serve the community and its larger environs as an academic, research, and civic partner.
A copy of the full study can be found at http://www.pace.edu/pacepoll.
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