Civic Engagement is Good for the Economy Too

Civic engagement is good for the economy too, says a newly released study of the National Conference on Citizenship, entitled Civic Health and Unemployment: Can Engagement Strengthen the Economy?"

The study found that strong positive correlations can be found between civic engagement and resillience against unemployment. Thus, the report states that "the states and localities with more civic engagement in 2006 saw less unemployment growth between 2006 and 2010."

Thus, this study found a corelations between its elements of civic engagement (volunteering, attending public meetings, working with neighbors to address community problems, registering to vote, and voting) with favorable changes in unemployment numbers.

Specifically, it is reported that an increase in a state's rate of working with neighbors, public meeting attendence, voter registration and voluteering each correspond with a decrease in unemployment, even when factoring in economic factors.

Although the report offers numerous caveats, specifically because its statistics are from one economic cycle and not many, it also offers many explanations for these results. One, which seem highly reasonable to me, is that "participation in civil society can develop skills, confidence, and habits that make individuals employable and strengthen networks that help them find jobs."

I suspect that this finding should not be surprising. After all, in a society where networking is so crucial to finding jobs or partners with which to form businesses, it cannot be surprising that the growth of civil society will also spill over into the growth of employment. However, although the logic of this conclusion seems natural to the engaged citizen, the fact that this pattern might hold up during a great recession, and across the United States as a whole, is sufficiently newsworthy in my opinion.

The study report includes one curious header, namely "Communities and political jurisdictions with stronger civil socieies are more likely to have good governments."

This conclusion is drawn from the fact that there is a correlation between voting, registering to vote, contacting public officials, and state resilience against unemployment. Although the conclusion seems plausible to me, the analysis seems to miss a step. For this conclusion to be the case, the contacting public officials and voting must be able to correlate to wise decisions in government.

From what I know about how American government works and the nature of political pressure, I do not need further evidence for the notion that a more engaged citizens leads to a government more inclined to respond on the topics on which citizens are mobilized. However, the characterization of responsive government as necessarily 'good government' seems too imprecise and perhaps not necessarily accurate.

The report also leads to an additional question, namely: is the correlation between decreased unemployment and civic engagement equally true among all segments of society, or are the statewide and city statistics favorable because of benefits to particular segments of society. For instance, will an individual living in a poor area of town be more likely to find work if he or she is civically engaged, or are our statistics made possible only due to the progress of those with prior associations with those of means.

I suspect that there would likely be two sets of findings. First, given the segregation between rich and poor in society, increased civic engagement among those who are low income would not necessarily translate to the same level of economic opportunities as increased civic engagement among those who are already connected. However, increased civic engagement among those who are poor or low-income would still likely increase economic opportunities for them, and might give them access to jobs and business opportunities not necessarily available to them, or even to a less ambitious wealthy/connected individual.

A second question arises: is there any correlation between decreases in underemployment with civic engagement, or is the correlation only with unemployment? In other words, when there is greater civic engagement, what sort of jobs are created? Are they sustainable, and are they available to society as a whole?

Notwithstanding my questions, I believe these new statistics will prove very useful for encouraging Americans to get and remain civically engaged. Perhaps one might even commission a study to indicate the affect on the economy of increased activism in the names of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. Thus one might find that these movements increase economic activity and thus have a direct correlation with the sustainability of certain jobs in areas of society affected by these movements.