‘Do I have to worry about my neighbor? Yes, because it affects my life.’

By Susan Geier, Granite State News Collaborative

Looking out the window at the view of Mount Monadnock from his home office in Jaffrey, Robert Putnam admitted he was getting a little preachy trying to summarize his life’s work. 

“We actually have to feel morally connected to other people, and I know that sounds kind of mushy,” he said.

Putnam, a longtime New Hampshire resident, is a nationally known political scientist specializing in comparative politics and has written 14 books. He is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and retired from active teaching in 2018. 

His seminal book, “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” published in 2000, drew on vast research and data to show how people had grown more politically polarized, less engaged in clubs and other organizations, in civic participation and with each other over the past 50 years. 

“America has gotten worse in the last 20 years when it comes to trusting each other,” Putnam said.

He said the decline in our social capital is detrimental to ourselves and communities. Social capital, according to Putnam, is the relationship and trust among people and organizations.

New Hampshire residents still have many civic health strengths, such as talking with friends, volunteering, voting, and working together for the good of their communities, according to preliminary findings from the upcoming Civic Health Index by University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy. 

Civic health is defined as looking at who takes part and who does not in public life and includes factors such as how much people trust each other, attend public meetings, get involved, vote and help their neighbors.

The index — CHI, for short — will be released in October. It is based on U.S. Census data and the 2023 Granite State Poll conducted by the UNH Survey Center. While New Hampshire is still doing well compared to other states, this research mirrors Putnam’s findings of a measurable decrease in civic health here and across the country.

“The background to this whole thing is the work I did with the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation in 2000,” Putnam said. 

Back then, New Hampshire was part of a nationwide Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey conducted around the country involving 30,000 people. New Hampshire scored quite high in the social capital rankings.

“In fact, my corner of New Hampshire, Cheshire County, was the highest in the whole country. We were doing well then,” Putnam said. 

An ‘I’ society

Since that time, more surveys and research have been conducted around the state to get a sense of our collective civic health. For example, in 2001, 90 percent of New Hampshire residents said they trusted their neighbors. That figure dropped to 79 percent in 2019 but rose to 84 percent last year, according to the Carsey research.

“It looks like I predicted that, although it has been confirmed by many others,” he said of his “Bowling Alone” findings.

Putnam cites four key areas where this shows up:

1. Social isolation. 

2. Political polarization.

3. Economic inequality.

4. Cultural terms (how we show up for each other).

He said the slow decline in voting, volunteering, spending time with friends, families or belonging to groups or clubs affects the health of our communities and civic institutions. 

It also affects our health. Last year, the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, released a report citing a public health crisis of loneliness, isolation and lack of connection in our country. Even before the pandemic, approximately half of U.S. adults reported experiencing measurable levels of loneliness. Disconnection fundamentally affects our mental, physical and societal health, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

Putnam said this shift over the last 50 years is because we’ve become an “I” society instead of a “we” society — meaning that we care more about ourselves than about our neighbors and communities. So, while connectedness and civic engagement may still be on the high side in New Hampshire, we aren’t much different from other states. 

 “Trust in each other is down. We’ve gotten less connected with each other,” he said.

While the pandemic had some effect, Putnam said the impact wasn’t as great as some may think. 

“When we look back in 20 years, COVID will be a blip — just a part of the basic downward trend,” he said. “The basic trend wasn’t caused by COVID. We are more turtle-like. We pull in and hunker down.”

Putnam said the country has seen swings in behavior before. From roughly 1900 to 1960, the country was trending in the other direction — the upswing. This pattern of what he called U-shaped curves was the subject of his 2020 book, written with Shaylyn Romney Garrett, “The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again.”

Social media, he adds, doesn’t help, but isn’t the cause, either. 

“Like COVID, in the big picture, social media is a blip. It’s contributing, but it’s not the big story. We learned in COVID that we could Zoom with grandma, but it wasn’t the same as hugging grandma.”

What will it take to make a change? 

“That is exactly the whole point of my whole career,” Putnam said. “If it were easy to change, we would have done it by now. We are in a pickle.”

But, he said, change starts with each of us. 

“Do I have to worry about my neighbor?” he asked. “Yes, because it affects my life. We have to teach our kids the Golden Rule. That will work and that is the only way.” 

These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.