Robert D. Putnam on Our Civic Life in Decline

hi I'm Bill Kristol welcome to conversations I'm very glad to have with me today Robert Putnam professor of public policy at the Harvard School of Government formerly at the government department at Harvard where and a very distinguished commentator and scholar student of American public life and many different aspects so thanks for thanks for joining me it's great to be with you Bill your most recent book you most famous book I suppose maybe he is Bowling Alone from when was that 1999 2000 2000 come back to that but your most recent book is called our kids the American Dream in crisis I think there's a continuity between the two books let's just talk about let's watch the books but talk about America I mean what is your analysis of the society the politics the culture would above all that I mean your peer achill student of American society everyone else has ideas and opinions but you've actually looked at the data so what what what alarms you or doesn't alarm you whatever what are the fun or what are the things one should know if you're thinking what's up in America well if you mean by what's up I know you didn't but what's up what's going well there are a lot of things that are going well and I want to begin by saying that because a lot of what I have to say is what's not going well in Iraq but over the over the last 50 years say over the period since I was in college a lot of things are gone well America is materially better off than we were having meter cell phones a longer life expectancy more tolerance for minorities of all sorts gender preference women are have a my my daughter has a lot more more opportunities than my sister would have had obviously we've made progress also on race not enough but we've made progress already so a lot of things good things have happened but I think some pretty bad things have happened to over this period and the two of them that have attracted my attention most firmly are a decline in our sense of community our sense of connection with one another and that is what I wrote about in Bowling Alone the title Bowling Alone are basically referring to the fact that although more Americans are bowling than ever actually more Americans Bowl and vote bully leagues bullying in teams is off by about 70 or 80 percent now from the from the peaks and that reflects well that's that was the image of the lonely bowler but the but the larger picture was that in in many different ways in which we can measure these things people are just less connected with other people in civic activities in within their own family family dinners were disappearing and have continued to disappear in terms of their ordinary everyday life people were just people had fewer friends actually fewer intimate friends argument wasn't so much a psychological one as a sociological Winterfest of my work that's right that in fact there is less community not just that people that's why vaguely felt well how people do feel it and what the book says you're right it's not just not just in your mind actually that's just true and a lot of when when I published the book one of the most striking things that happen to me after his loss of people came up to me and said yes you you've got it right they didn't know the data for goodness sakes they knew that their mom had been in Hadassah and they weren't or their dad had been in the Rotary Club or you know in a union and they weren't and they conceived that as something that they they they knew why they had they were busy they couldn't do all that other stuff but they also felt a little guilty that they weren't doing it and now all comes this Harvard professor and says actually it's not you it's all of us we're all disconnecting from one another that was the first place where this began to focus on this change in the degree to which people were connected with one another maybe we can get back to the internet because when I wrote the book you know it didn't exist actually but it came into being almost exactly after I wrote a book and so people then often natural question is well isn't the internet more connection than ever we've had before so that's an important issue that maybe we can bracket for now but that larger picture was that we were being less we were in fact less connected with one another both in the big picture that is connecting with your town or your community and also in the smallest most intimate way less connected with your family even in in in Bowling Alone I tried to argue that that's it's not just that's an interesting fact it has a lot of comp bad consequences because a lot of the way especially American society fits together has depended upon what Tocqueville wrote about you know in the you know in the almost 200 years ago now about this Americans constantly joining things and we've been able to we've been able to run a different kind of society a less status society a more free-market society because we had real strengths in the area of social capital and we had relatively high levels of social trust we sort of did trust one another not perfectly of course but we did compared to other countries and all of that is declining and I began to worry well gee isn't that going to be a problem if our system is built for one kind of people in one kind of community and now we've got a different one maybe it's not gonna work so well and one way in which I then talked about it was the idea that we were having a more constricted sense of a we that is what had once been when we talked about we we met we old all to give people in town is what so it's a we I'm not one exaggerated of course there were people who were out groups and someone but there was a sense of we and that over my lifetime that had gotten constricted and so that we became an i and fast forward that's 2000 coming forward 15 10 years I'd be then began to think about what are the consequences of that change and other big changes in America for kids just before we get to kids just curious so the and you think you're biased but I hey the data both hold up and obviously there's a huge amout of back-and-forth in sugar controversy and detailed analysis and her detailed analysis you think a the data's from Bowling Alone holds up and be is that still has it gotten more that way yeah yes yes to both I mean I'm happy to know I don't know I just curious I find the family from position things that I've written in the past that turned out not to be right but this wasn't one as well I mean a lot of the history the history of the debate about Bowling Alone was that I wrote an article before being had done a whole lot of work on it right called Bowling Alone and people said no no he's forgotten soccer leagues he's forgotten reading groups he's forgotten all these things if you took those into account there wouldn't be any decline so I spent five years actually and got really good data on reading groups and soccer clubs and so on it turned out when you counted everything I had underestimated the decline so I actually think and I think that's probably now what the what the consents I'm willing to what rest with the scholarly consensus I think the scholarly consensus is there has been a movement toward greater individuation that's the jargon that that no sociology would use but towards truffles that individualism it's not that far from talked about right so the answer is yes I do and and it's gotten more that way problem with with the one important question about the internet because the Internet is a big deal the Internet is a network and therefore in principle maybe connecting with people over the internet could be just as good as right now let's not bracket it's okay to commit it on that so what's the other kind of argument would be well it's a obviously out there's all these new kinds of communities online virtual communities people finding people sharing interests and hobbies and well I think look there was a debate for about 10-15 years actually after the internet was came into creation about whether the internet was real social capital as real connections or not real connections and that I think was a misplaced way of phrasing the problem I think because nowadays almost all of our human network social networks yours and mine and most people's are simultaneously real right and face to face but also electronic right almost yeah my my daughter is a is a writer and a historian and I'm a writer and a something of historian and she writes or at least did for a long time Robin lived in the in the jungles of Costa Rica and I live in the jungles of New Hampshire and we're both night people and we have a lot of email go back and forth talking how's your chapter going what's you know now I'm sure I'm much closer to my daughter than I would be with the email and without the email I do not meet my daughter on the internet that is this is a relationship that has a reality that is not limited to the and therefore conceptually what you do is think about connections as alloys alloy is a mixture of two metals that has characteristic you know I never remember copper and chain or something you mix them together you get whatever bronze and it has different copper tees that either them separately we have mixed now real face-to-face connections and electronic connections in ways that create new alloys they're good for some things they're not good for other things they're not all I happen to be one of the oldest users of Facebook in the world because it was invented by someone who was a a roommate of one of a person taking my seminar at Harvard and so ma my seminar was a beta tester for for Facebook and I've been on it forever and initially Facebook was limited to campuses so everybody all of your friends were real friends that is all of your fans were real friends then they opened it up to everybody and anybody who's visible I'm sure this happens to you it happens to me all the time you get asked to be friends with people you've never heard of it Hans from Berlin last night learned to be a friend of mine I have no idea what Hans had in mind I don't know don't even know for sure what ginger hunts is I don't know is he planning to meet me at Tempelhof with flowers if I show up if I get sick will he bring me chicken soup so there's been a divergence between friends and real friend and that represents I'm not negative about the Internet I'm not but I don't think you can phrase it in just okay well we we're no longer bowling but we're right surfing right because there's something no I get I'll draw you a graph here very quickly it turns out having more friends makes you happier there's really good research on this and I can draw the graph each additional friend makes you happier right these are real friends real friends yeah the graph goes up like this three friends you're happier than with just two 12 friends you're happier than with just 11 it stops at 2020 the 21st friend does not make you any happier than the 20th but it's going up like that so the line goes up now what's the line looked like for happiness and friends on Facebook flat absolutely flat your 400th friend doesn't do it doesn't do it the first print be Facebook friend yeah so I'm I'm I'm what I'm trying to say is the Internet is really interesting and we it's very early days so we don't know how it's going to transform it is transforming our society I'm just cautioning against this around for one replacement of of heavy camp dinner with your family right in some ways it increases and it's complicated as it cuts both ways it does yes yeah any okay so that's the there's the problem of the decline of community which is also decline of social capital right and then you wanted to see what the effect of that on kids and kids especially I mean there there's several big things that have happened in America over the last 50 years as I say some of them are good three that I think are not so good our first of all the growing income inequality in America people I n have gotten really quite wealthy um people who are well-educated done very well that's me and you we've done well very well compared to other folks but people in the from the median income down have not done so well over the last 30 or 40 years so that's one trend the second trend is this decline in social capital the decline in connectedness and a third trend is the growing segregation of American society and this is something that Charles murder talks about and heat Charles and I interestingly we have very different politics but we both agree almost entirely on the facts of what's happened including the collapse of the working-class family and so and Charles wrote this great book coming apart that just documented many of those trends and and our kids talks about many that many of the same themes that his book talks about we differ in two ways I think one is well one is which we can get to later you know and I have very different views about what you can do about it but a second and we're in way more important from my point of view is I'm focusing other kids all of my attention is asking what difference does this coming apart of American society make for kids right and the what we found in this is what's written in the what's in the book our kids is that all of these trends together have meant that kids coming from educated backgrounds upper middle class kids my grandchildren my children and my grandchildren are doing better than ever right there they better than their counterparts you know 30 or 40 years ago higher test scores you know better track records I mean better you know track and field records in every way they're do it better and better but on the same measures kids coming from working-class backgrounds of all races in America are doing worse and worse and that's what the our kids is talking about the reason I'm focused on that a lot of people talk about inequality nowadays and they're talking mostly they're talking about inequality of income that is you know rich folks and poor folks and that's that's relevant but historically Americans have not cared so much about their being rich books and poor folks we figured everybody gets on the ladder at the same point y'all get a fair start some people climb higher Warren Buffett Bill Gates fine they work harder they're better climbers why shouldn't they be well-paid all the assumptions that we're all getting on a ladder at the same place but we've cared more than most other countries about that kind of inequality any or equality equality of opportunity do all kids basically have a fair starting point in life regardless of what their parents did or didn't do and that is the cool I think that's the core of the American dream I really do that everybody everybody here I ought to get a fair chance to start in life and we were never perfect on that but I think what the evidence says is we're getting worse fast on that and I think and thought that that ought to be of concern to everybody not just progressives everybody ought to worry if that fundamental core idea that just because you're a kid in America you ought to get a fair start and your concern is not simply that the relative I mean obviously I suppose the kid of two college educated professionals is gonna have a start higher on the ladder than the kid who doesn't have those advantages but what wouldn't be so worried about that perhaps as long as the kids lower on the ladder still had a good shot - yeah make it up and but I think your your argument is is not just the gap but that actually absolutely even the kid lower on the ladder that's right well now facing obstacles he didn't thirty fifty years ago is that right that's right and and it's not just there's a gap but the gap is growing right and that's why there the whole book is encompassed in that things getting better and better for kids from educated homes kids getting worse things getting worse for kids coming from less well educated homes and the kids had nothing to do it's not their fault right make sure I mean it people joke the only the most important thing I was choosing your parents well that's just wrong I mean I I can joke about it but it's some deep level that just feels to me deeply wrong and to go back to the link of the decline in community there are many reasons for the growing gap between rich kids poor kids many but the core underlying reason in my view is captured in the title of the book that's why it's called our kids because when I was growing up in the 50s you know you know a different world and when the my parents talked about doing things for our kids we you know we've got it we've got to have invest some money so that our kids can have a swimming pool they did not mean building a swimming pool in our backyard for my sister in me they Mont let let's pay higher taxes so that all the kids in town have it yeah swimming pool in high school that all the term our kids meant all the kids in town and and the proof of it was they kept doing those things when my sister and I were all gone so they were doing it for the other kids in town but as a result of the Bowling Alone phenomenon over the last 30 or 40 years the meaning of our kids the meaning of what our obligations are to one another has shriveled and it's become now focused when people talk about our kids now they mean their own biological kids and if you go back to my hometown and talk about poor kids there now they say about the pork is will they're not my kids let somebody else there's somebody else's kids let them worry about them and that you see how that sense that other people's kids don't really belong to me I mean of course we pay attention to our own kids I do and you do and I'm not trying to say that they're that's wrong on the contrary I'm trying to say we ought to have some regard as Americans historically have had for all the kids in town matter what degree does the data suggest that if you're a working-class kid growing up in an intact family I think this is a big obvious conservative question for sure or doesn't put much I don't offer a lot of emphasis on family break up that certainly is the theme of charles murray sure and abide I mean I agree that's a so bad this is an empirical question yeah I mean how much data if you are a working-class kid from an intact family does that ladder still look the way it did there no no so your argument is that it does go I mean I'm gonna be falsely quantitative here but of the total growing gap maybe a third of it is due to the family the intact families and the differential family breakup that's right and then you still have to ask well why is the differential family breakup right fair enough and and that there's two schools of thought on why the working class has working-class family has collapsed it has there's no it's interesting it's interesting case in social science so used to be disagreement about whether that was true there now isn't disagreement that the working class family is really breaking up all races oh yeah and and why then black that was controversial was it I know but but no it's tennis it's not easy they said I mean it's if it's true it's true you know the thing that's even more surprising is there's now a pretty broad agreement that that matters that is that it matters for kids whether they're growing up in an intact family that is it's the stability of the family structure that is really important for kids and progressives like me say that just as firmly as conservatives do but you are saying anyway would before the parenthesis that only a third roughly of the explanation is to the family that you make up so that isn't the bulk of it or it is most I mean don't put it statistically if you look at kids coming from intact upper-class families intact lower-class families there's a gap well the gap isn't growing it isn't quite as big when you once you've taken out that fact but of course you can't take out that fact because it's an important fact right so so that's genuinely worrisome obviously then you have of course you have to ask cuz here's where Charles and I do disagree actually where did the breakup of the family came come from and how much of that is the sixties right by which we mean whatever we mean by the sixties them you know the moral collapse and or the the welfare system that's his theory about it and how much of it is the eighties that is how much of the breakup of the working-class family is because of the the deindustrialization of America which meant that all those working-class guys no longer now have steady employment and haven't had a raise for thirty or forty years I think the honest answer to that is it's both it is partly the normative question and we have progressives have to talk honestly about that it is partly this now thirty years long grinding lack of Economic Opportunity for working-class less educated guys and when I talked to thought all conservatives which I do all the time actually they say of course that's right now right and this seems to me in principle this whole problem the opportunity gap analysis those voters since those people have moved conservative or republican and they're voting yet happens in the last 30 or 40 years it's something that actually Republicans in a way have feel more probably day-to-day you know in the sense of their their voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania yes I mean the disparity between Trump supporters we're speaking here in January and more conventional Republican voters is a huge class huge class difference now an education difference absolutely in the Republican primary Festing absolutely a political I suppose manifestation of what you're right it is and you know I I think the problem that I'm talking about which is this opportunity gap which I'm I'm I know I'm gonna sound hyperventilating here I think that is really a just a fundamental problem because it goes to the very legitimacy core of the American state and that's not just me talking I this is gonna be terrible name-dropping President Bush invited me to come to the White House talking about something else and I talked to him and I did and then I talked to him about like graphs and he kept me for a half an hour and and I'm not a major Republican campaign could you better I'm not a major conservative intellectual why need to keep me for half hour it's very simple because if I was right about the growing opportunity gap that nobody in that building nobody in that office could dismiss that because it goes to the very core of the legitimacy of our system that is this idea that everybody gets a fair shot so I do think this is a problem that ought to ought to be of interest across party lines and it's a problem in my view a purple problem by that I mean parts of the problem you can understand most clearly through red conservative lenses you can see the collapse of the family most clearly through red conservative lenses parts of the problem you can see most clearly through blue progressive lenses you see the closed factories and and the shutdowns and the D unionization so on that view purple problems they're a lot of problems the world are purple problems and the way you you know different kind of America we would have solved that is I would sit down together and I'd say no come on part of this is really the minimum wage we've got to talk about that you say but part of this really is the value stuff we've got to talk more about the values of stable families and so on and in a real in a realistic world we both said yeah you're right let's figure out how to do that the problems are this extreme polarization of our politics knows you can't have that kind of a conversation I mean even if we could I suppose would be another thing to prove that the policies we might each want to do would do much good I guess that's another question I mean which we could get to it but just to be clear what you're saying I think what's powerful of what you're saying is not just there's as evidence of family breakup and or social lack of social contact and polling alone and we suspect this will have bad consequences down the road it seems to me what you're saying is that what you've discovered and I think others are on the same path that it has it is having grass had already bad consequence not that sort of we speculate that people growing up in this environment or people growing up in this society are not going to be in as good shape twenty years from now as people growing up forty years ago were twenty years ago we got them right there right you're saying that you can see the actual madness you won't be able to see it in their lifetime incomes until they become adults right so we've but if we wait assure then it's gonna be it's late it is like global warming I mean until you you're wait until you're absolutely certain right that it's happening you've lost another 30 or 40 years so you do see evidence and I suppose school performance and even an income it's not like people who are 20 or wouldn't be know already you see the effectiveness or incarceration I suppose what you're saying is so there's real this is a real problem not a likely problem we're going to confront in the future this is like no it's a real problem that we're already confronting and if we don't get about it soon it's going to get much worse before it gets better because this is a problem that has long deep roots and you can't turn it around this is a ship of state that you can't turn around quickly we're talking about the structure of families we're talking about the built deeply there are society these trends are and so even if you think as I do that there are things we can do about it and when I say we I don't only mean the state I also mean churches and other organizations that's not gonna happen overnight so this is a this is a problem it's a big problem that I think the country ought to take seriously and in the social capital side is it the case that I guess this would be a question of confirming your initial hypothesis that the wealthier types are have more social capital and our Bowling Alone less so to speak and yeah that's helping keep them afloat but you said that they're going up actually or kids are going up the kids are going up yeah they don't need boys they don't need bowling leagues in a sense and it was more important to the less you have a very simple example actually one of the reasons one of the graphs that looks like this is taking part in extracurricular activities so taking part in band or football or chorus or or basketball or soccer whatever it's going up for kids coming from colleges in Hills going down for kids coming from working-class homes even sports and you have to ask well why is that and an important part of the answer turns out to be that 20 years ago we started charging kids for taking part it's called pay to play if you want to play football in my high school now in am is going in Portland Ohio in the 50s you want to play football there now you've got to pay a fee the the nationwide the average fee for a year of sports is something like sixty hundred dollars if your annual income is you know one hundred sixty thousand dollars that's rounding air but if your annual income of sixteen thousand dollars who in their right mind is gonna pay 10 percent of their family income on football right so you might say well let's come on Bob worry about something else don't worry about kids playing football but what we know actually is that playing sports and taking part in extracurricular activities has real measurable benefits on lifetime income holding constant test scores and college degrees and so on people take part in in extracurricular activities not just football but band of course do better why is that because they have soft skills that the market is willing to pay more they know how to do team work they know how stick-to-itiveness well just my mom's term for grit that's what people learn in in extra killer so extracurriculars are not a frill they're an important part of the skill package that all kids nowadays have to have people coming from well-to-do backgrounds know that and they're now paying a ton for their kids to have coaches and and you know special summer camps for learning to sing or whatever and working-class people don't and that's because we've and this may be controversial with with some of your audience we've privatized the provision of those kinds of services we've said it's up to the parents to decide if they want to pay for their kids to have those skills we don't say if they you know algebra if you want if your parent should pay algebra algebra they should pay for algebra queries but by by the fact that it's not that the upper class hasn't suffered from the decline of social capital it's they've been able to buy their way out of and I'm talking about me and my kids right I'm not trying to talk about somebody else we've been able to buy our way out of this collapse of social connections is that make sense yeah well I'm just curious oh what's I mean leaving aside the who provides they whether it's the public or the private or charitable organizations and one could imagine has a mixture sure practical arguments about which way would work better you could give people vouchers I mean they're all kinds of you know market friendly ways I suppose to provide these by the way the leading relieving leading advocate for fixing this problem in the country is a Republican Secretary of State in Ohio who's trying to abolish pay to play in Ohio for exactly the reason that I'm talking about and what would be most important dollars so his extra activities that's interesting I hadn't known that that's such a predictor other things I mean if you were advising a county somewhere or a city somewhere where I suppose even a family there was a war a church that had was a god if requested 10 million dollars I could spend it on anything it wanted to in terms of helping the families or people it review and what would be relative what are the what levels does intervention help at what where would you focus I mean obviously I I mean I focus at a lot of levels this is a big problem so I'd worry if it were me I'd worry about how we can improve the economic conditions of the dads in these families that would enable them to stick with their families encourage them to stick with their families and provide more stable homes that's part of what I would do I would also in wouldn't mind preaching more about the importance of stable families that's what people on the right are more likely to say and I think that's that's fine I don't object to that I certainly don't object to that but then coming away from that question I think there are a lot of things that the private sector could do fundamentally they involve the technical term is mentoring but that means having a stable adult in the lives of these poor kids the one single fact that you can carry away from any destroyers in our book cause it's not just data it's stories the data there are two but the stories is that poor kids in America are alone they're just really isolated they can't trust their families because their families are broke they're breaking up they can't they can't trust their teachers because they're going to very poor schools they can't trust their churches because they are no longer at church they can trust their communities because they don't their communities are falling apart they can't trust their coaches because they're not in sports they lack any caring adult I know that sounds like I'm exaggerating but I'm not they lack this kind of support that you would give to your gave to your children grandchildren that I give to my children and grandchildren they don't have that in their lives I start with the premise all kids do dumb things rich kids poor kids black kids white kids brown kids your kids my kids kids get involved in you know they get involved in drinking or they god forbid they get involved in drugs or they make a dumb romantic decision or they get in a fight with a teacher god knows what when one of our kids that is the upper class kids does a dumb thing instantly airbags inflate to protect the kid from the consequences of the bad decision so if one of my grandchildren god forbid you get into all those drugs the first thing I do is find the best lawyer in town and the second thing is I find the best um rehab facility in town if a poor kid of any race does exactly the same dumb thing no airbags because they don't have the same density of caring adults in their lives I don't mean that they're often their parents often it's a single mom and often she's doing everything she can to try to hold her family together and earn a living and so on so I'm not trying to demonize the mothers of poor kids I am sometimes trying to demonize the dads of poor kids but but the fact of the matter is these kids in a way that poor kids in America in the 1950s were not bereft of social support that's this is the this is what a the the feel of what it's like to live in a Bowling Alone society if you're at the bottom of the at the bottom of the heap so if I had a magic wand I give every one of these poor kids a caring adult who could be provide air bags does that makes any difference could provide guidance to the kids couldn't do what I would do for my kids or grandchildren what you would do for your kids are dreadful and it's not like this is rocket science it's just there's nobody in their families who do that churches historically played in the very churches in synagogues and religious communities played a very important role in that historically I've written a whole book which we haven't talked about about that role of religion in American society but the church's mother said the church's fault or not as a different question have gotten disconnected for the working class and that there's another one of these graphs just like that and therefore if it were in my power I would say to every clergyman in America think about not the kids were already in Sunday school but the kids in your community who need that kind of caring and you would not privilege if that's like worse three year olds or eight year olds or 15 year olds I mean you would do it at every level I take it yeah data that shows it's particularly effective or difficult so it's gives you different kids need different concepts I mean children need different kinds of things at different stages we now know a lot about early brain development and we know that it starts very early and we know that paying attention to kids reading to kids really really young kids makes a big difference and so we know that there are huge long really frightening long-term effects of of differences in care for kids I don't mean just custodial care I mean interacting with them I mean in in the book would call that good night moon time good night moon time has really a lot of power and poor kids don't have as much good night the data show this they don't know as much good night moon time as rich kids I do so that's the early stages it's not reading to them when they're 16 it's it's more providing role models and and as I say airbags to help them everybody makes mistakes but there's we have a the kids in poor circumstances live in a much less unforgiving world and how much I was talking someone who was an army officer actually and we were chatting about this set of issues and he had he said well here's a hypothesis you know he said his platoon was full of enlisted he was officer college graduate but I was in consumers full of enlisted soldiers and they lot of them came from difficult family situations disappear enlisted one you probably haven't gone to to call you have a graduate from college I was certainly a father maybe a lot of had even gone to college right and something but enlisted because they were in like tough scrapes when they were 17 or 18 and some adult told them or maybe they just had the thought that they the army or the Marine Corps where I can be good for them and he said their own lives were fairly by conventional middle quest centers somewhat messed up you know for a number of pregnancies out of wedlock that they've been involved in when they were kid barrages that didn't work out you know it's age seventeen kind of thing but he said he sort of thought these kids they would be okay I mean that yeah they're not gonna be okay the way we sort of expect a kid to smoothly progress through schooling and through marriage and kids and all but then it would be kind of a messy situation but that they would end up you know as valuable members of the community with jobs and with families maybe they'd be a little messier than the families of you know this 50 years ago and so forth and I I mean that's a nice I ate what hopes that's true and B obviously that's gonna be true of some number of them but I guess what you're suggesting is the data are not encouraging about the you can't just sit back and sort of think that this is all gonna kind of work my way out of Iraqis for several reasons first of all I do think the military has powerful benefits for many kids I mean I could tell you stories I spoke at West Point about this not long ago and I could I won't take I won't filibuster here but I can tell you stories about kids at West Point who are have been able to turn their lives around so I'm not on the other side of that he wasn't making a military for the I suppose you could argue that no no but it is poor it's better tourism huge it is a spurt allistic I mean pretty realistic means as you will know parenting right and but the first thing to say is because we have an all-volunteer army they have high standards and the bottom 15% of the population couldn't get into the military so he's already getting a sword he's getting better he's getting the upper half of the bottom third can I put it that way and then and that means there's a lot of kids down there who are not we couldn't even get in the military and then there are a lot of kids who don't get in the military I'm not I mean I usually would be in favor of universal service in fact I would be but in the real world that's not gonna happen and I so in a way I'm completely agree with what he said but saying that's not all slick it's a small sliver yeah of what of what we what we need to do and then realistically we're not gonna have we're not gonna have you know eighty percent of all of our kids serving in the military so we gotta have a plan for the numbers making the point which I guess that you're saying probably isn't the case that he wasn't really making a I'm he's pleased I think also that the military is a good institution in that way but I think he wasn't making a military for his making of where the maybe we upper middle class people who were more used to a more bourgeois off you want kind of you know family life and well that is rare pass maybe we're over we're overly pessimistic about the ability these kids with less fortunate backgrounds to sort of make their own way in a messy way to a pretty decent outcome but you're saying try to look at the fright side but you're saying that they're not I mean that could easily have been true in 1950s when people were working in my hometown in the UAW and we're working on assembly lines and they could do well for themselves and do well for their kids that isn't true now I'm it's just it's a fairy tale and partly because the those of us on the upper branch have been getting better and better we're investing much more in our kids more time we're investing more time in our kids more money in our kids more and in productive ways I don't mean just we're buying them things to say go away no we're very focused on our kids and it I don't I know you don't want to be in the position of saying well it's good for my kids that we're doing all these things for their but these poor kids we don't need to do that for them yeah that's not what you're saying but that's somebody has to be worrying about these girls they're not absolute and final point we'll move on to the misfit now immigrants I suppose would be an interesting yes how do they're interesting just interesting part of the country so they're important for sure so interesting is a kind of social science question right you're getting people coming in as yes well not all of them a lot of them as adults right so I guess you do get a little bit of a snapshot of what the mobility possibilities are for economic mobility and for succeeding in many cases without some of the advantages of the way yeah well I'm focused forth I mean I mean what are the opportunities sorry yeah just what is that just curious what the data suggests about that was it was a bit early and ever but 40 years ago than it is today and sort of the way that it was better to be a poor kid I guess 4050 years ago than it is today you know it's it's it's it's the two cases are quite different for for several reasons first of all immigrant families are much more intact than than poor native-born American families of all races this is not about race and and therefore immigrant kids of immigrants are to some extent shielded from the larger for reasons that conservatives fully understand right there growing up in more intact families or in my term that there's not an answer to the problem to say hey look how well everything kids are doing well it's not a crazy as if someone says there's no firm ability on your side and you say wait a second we know in Fairfax County Virginia where I live there are all these people who are the sons and daughters of Vietnamese who came over who were very poor by definition when they came over since they didn't exactly weren't invited to take many belongings out of Vietnam or Cambodia or even people from Southeast Asia thankfully and they're doing well but what you're saying is that's fine that's good if that's the case but it's not it doesn't really answer the problem your diffic no and and and while it's true that some immigrant groups especially from Asia have priced so high the adults have high upward mobility it's not true for all all of them because all of them don't have the same they're a self-selected group of that like we get contrary to what some political candidates have said we get actually the best basically why it's about the ability exactly and they do drop they're starting up with with a very low level of human capital that is they don't the the most of the of the immigrants from from Latin America come in have not been engineers or in anything like that they've been they and their first job probably their lifetime job is in manual work and their kids are going to do better than the kids of native born annual workers because their families are more intact but they're also starting their kids are starting in poverty and that the poverty part of it doesn't help the kids so the next generation I'm I do I think immigration is a big success story in America I absolutely do you you won't find me not saying immigration is an important success story in America but it's not a way of saying stop worrying about these poor other poor kids in America the immigrants are gonna fix it for us I don't and and by the way family stability in the second generation of immigrants goes they revert to a the American pattern that if the families become less stable right simulation you've alluded a few times to your own youth and I'm just curious how did you get in this business did you want to be a social social scientist and academic a professor when you were growing up but support were the key influences and decision points people are I'm interested lots of people would be um I describe this a little bit in the opening chapter of our kids because I decided to try to do a little bit of a history of this my hometown I grew up in a small town in Ohio called Port Clinton Ohio and Lake Erie the kind of like Lake Wobegon on on Lake Erie nobody very rich nobody very poor this is what seemed as a child but also now I know cuz I've come back in the other day that it was a very middle-class town and very high I would now say high social capital people lots of people and again this is not golden glow' I've looked back at the data high rates of church-going high rates of volunteerism people connected with one another and I'll carry the story forward you know in a bit my own personal story but I think I've reflected a lot on my cuz when you get old you reflect on your own lives your own life and there's a certain sense in which much of my own academic research can be read as saying I grew up in a really neat time in place it was pretty equal not a lot of class divisions not very politically polarized not even very racist there was some racism of course there was but less than you might think and and a lot of sense of community and the books that I've written have been catalyzed at cataloging the ways in which we no longer live in that kind of in America and I I hope that all the data in my book says it's not just Putnam ruminating about this Golden Age that he grew up in it's actually he can show us that the data that America has become less like that and and it's different it's always better but in some ways worse well I so I I grew up in in Portland went to Parkland High School did pretty well in school got a fellowship from the local company so I went to college planning to be a physics major maybe a chemistry major I went in 59 and and then in the fall of my sophomore year I took a political science class this was the Nixon versus Ken Kennedy campaign I had I came from a solid middle-class Republican background so I had actually written a personal note that Nixon instead saying I would like to volunteer this is kid right that even I'm sure he'd never read it but I was I was stuck on the Nixon mailing list forever like I never get off honey that's funny and I took a class in political science in the fall of 1950 in 1960 oh there was a cute girl who sat just in front of me we got in the habit of having lunch together after after class there was once this was a 50s or the 60s beginning of the sixties and so there was one time a year called Sadie Hawkins day when women could ask men out and she asked me out on a date and the first date was she would take me she was a firm Democrat the first date was she would take me to a she sprung this on me after I had agreed to do it take me to a John John Kennedy rally and what in one of the suburbs of Philadelphia and the next week turnabout was fair play I took her to a Nixon motorcade going right by them that fall was really it was a very interesting fall as I'm still buried at this woman now my advisors a people legislature on the 20th of January we took a train from 30th Street Station down to Washington really snowy day I remember that snowy day vividly stood in the crowd at the on the on the east front of the Capitol because that's where the inauguration is were held in and I heard with my own ears Kennedy say ask not what your country can do which you can do for your country and honestly bill I'm embarrassed to say this even now I'm 75 years old the hair on the back of my neck goes up because I thought he was speaking to me I know that sounds really corny but I was a kid right yeah and I thought I want to use I know I'm embarrassed at how self can register this seems but it's just a true fact at that moment I said I'm I'm smart I want to use my scholarship to try to help the country not by you know building chips whatever drive doesn't have more at all but I didn't I didn't want to do it in the lab I wanted to do it working about social science right and so I gradually switched across from from biology to psychology to political science to history actually aged up with a major and a minor in history and then one after graduate school and you know who did the standard of an academic you got interested in politics before political science anyway or I mean there was there wasn't one teacher who got you fascinating well no I mean it then once I once I was in the field I had really good teachers that Swarthmore is a very high quality undergraduate institution small so that you had really good relationships with your teachers I happen to have really good teachers including some one extremely good political theorist Roland Pennock who was important for me but there were others too but remember I had come in as I come into this whole story as a scientist so I was very interested in the way societies and and policies fit together but I carried with me from that scientific background the idea that you ought to be able to distinguish between nifty ideas I've just had and whether it was really true whether this nifty idea was really true and that so that led me to be caught up in the quantitative behavioral it was what was called then the behavioral revolution and quantitative revolution in political science which was n sweeping the field and seemed to hold promise of enabling us to distinguish between groovy thoughts that might just be groovy thoughts and groovy thoughts that actually were true or at least they correspond to the best evidence I could get and that's sort of that's kind of the role that I've meant to be playing in my whole in all of my scholarship and I have worked of some time of several times I've worked in government but actually once I was working in company I realized that's actually not what I'm really good at what I'm probably better at is sort of trying to think about big questions I try always to think about big questions not little toy questions but to think about them is in is in my terms as rigorously as I can that's why there's all these charts and graphs I know everything I write even though I'm in some sense writing in the tradition of Tocqueville but the quantitative work is in the service of understanding reality not so much it seems to be from reading your work in the service of you know answering some question from within the discipline that the discipline is decided is important it needs to be advanced you know so much of social science that seems to me today this is true in all fields I think of all subfields right it's now about it's not about understanding society better it's about somehow an internal social science doesn't have you know got what straight enough you know right you won't know this when I was president American Political Science Association my presidential address was on exactly this question and I it's sometimes phrased in terms of rigor versus relevance right and I reject that because I think you can at least some of us some of the time ought to be working on problems that are really highly relevant to ordinary people but also in a very rigorous way I not just some sometimes the internal disciplinary debates are actually quite useful in sharpening our intellectual tools in our method of methodological tools and so on but here's what I said is when I was almost but not quite in these words but this was the idea that I was trying to convey when I was in my presidential address professors live an incredibly cushy life I mean it's just if people knew what a cushion my professors live there probably a revolution I get paid actually a decent sum for doing what I would do I would pay to do what I'm I would pay people to allow me to do what I'm doing now so I live a really cushy life and that's being paid by taxpayers and I try to contribute back but it's being paid by taxpayers and by parents and foundations and so on part of the deal ought to be that at least part of the time our energies ought to be devoted to problems that ordinary people care about and so I don't think everything that is done in social science has to just like everything that's done in English have to be immediately legible to the reader of the Daily News but some of the time right we ought to be working on problems that my mother-in-law was a rest her soul she's no longer with us but she was very smart and and dismissive of academic stuff Zelda and I often think what Zelda what woods ill to say would she think that that was working on an important problem or she think this was some academic stuff and you yourself have attained great distinction but I'm curious do you think generally has political science or probably social the relevant social sciences kind of gone in the right direction are you sort of do you look around at the what's happening in the prestigious departments and prestigious universities and think yeah this is kind of what should be happening or do you think an awful lot of this is a row not what you would think very intelligent people living very issues days you know nicely supported lives you know who the opportunity to teach extremely intelligent undergraduates and grad students should be doing I'm just curious I mean not that anyone has a solution to this or that we want to be dictators I'm just you know but well I'm as you are I'm quite per list actually in my I view my view is you need a lot of people with different kinds of interests in any discipline doing things so I my work it's no longer at the front of the of the quantitative frontier because I'm old but I my work draws heavily I'm able to say with confidence the things that I did for example saying that that the family structure was maybe a third of the problem I'm able to say that and and I didn't mean it you know actually know the quantitative because I've done with data because I my team research team have done the data and that and that I wouldn't have been able to do a generation ago cuz we didn't have the tools mathematically for being able to understand that so I do think that there's a role for work that is really only immediately readable by other people in the profession I do think as I now repeating what I said I do think however that as a profession not everybody in the profession has to do this but as a profession we have to be driving toward answering big questions in American I got into this field in the 1960 said in 75 percent of Americans trusted the government in Washington to do what's right most of the time now that's sort of it is 19% of Americans trust yeah I got this feeling when political American politics seemed to be working well and I have not done my job I think because I've not somehow enabled people to understand what we what's gone wrong that's what I'm trying to do what I do think some deep some things have deeply gone wrong I don't mean it's just calculating regression equations but I do think we have to think about that question as a profession what's going wrong and how could we begin to turn it around see this is this is the one way I'm going to go back just a second to this disagreement between me and Charles Murphy who's a wonderful social scientist and a friend Charles and I have independently come to a very similar and it's not an accident a very similar account of some of the things that are going wrong in Americans decided today we don't agree on all the details but the big picture we agree on when I'm asked what do we do about it I can give you a list of answers and they may not be perfect answers but at least I think we ought to try to solve the problems and when he and I were on a stage together you're so go talking about this people asked him the same question he said I'm a libertarian I don't do solutions right and I'm not now making an argument I just couldn't say that I I come out of a Midwestern pragmatic let's see if we can fix the problems kind of background and so the idea that I'd be able to describe some big problem is having and then say well you know who cares this happened that's it not me right so you you you have an interest and actually you know help him deal with these problems not simply describing them and leaving it to others who allegedly would know better it was of course that distinction really doesn't exist either if you understand the problem better you probably better sense of what might work about what might yeah I don't think by the way that I don't think for a second that the solutions to these problems are gonna come out of some academics brain I think it's going to come out of a lot of people talking hard about it and in an older American political system we had the capacity to have a cut serious conversation about a problem that was not just a blue problem a red problem was a purple problem and try out different ways of approaching the problem that's what I regret that that we don't have that at least right now don't have that culture of having shared problems that we ought to work somehow together to figure out what can we do about this and you would think there would be more experimenting even in the private sector and philanthropic sector and what to do about it yes so we could learn a lot by I'm there are a lot of huge foundations and very wealthy people leaving aside the federal government in their states that are not paralyzed presumably you think you could actually get a lot of try a lot of things and some would work and some wouldn't work but then you'd be much better off I don't know pletely agree with that actually and I really think the solution the problem I'm talking about which is this opportunity gap it's going to come first at the state and local level and then eventually come to the next level I want to give one give you one specific example of why I'm optimistic that these we can solve these problems because we've been here before there's been previous periods in American history when we've had exactly this problem especially at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century the Gilded Age lots of problems like ours high political age of political corruption too high rates of political economic inequality growing gap between different parts of American society but then and this was across parties we began to solve the problem I want to give just one particular example because it's I think very illustrative in response to the growing gap among kids Americans invented the high school invented them for the first time in world history it began in small towns in the Midwest in in Kansas and Nebraska for the first time in world history people said every kid in town ought to have four years of post primary comprehensive education the high school wait nothing was happening in Scandinavia or Germany or Britain anywhere these folks farmers and small towns people said we ought to do this it turned and and it was not easy so cuz you had to say to the local bankers and businessmen and rich farmers would already pay for their kids to have a private secondary we're all now off in Chicago making money you had to say to them you have an interest in these other kids getting's is the public high school you the public high school right I say that I meant to say yeah the free public comprehensive high school it turned out to be the best decision Americans ever made because realize that wasn't so when is that this is nineteen ten plus is that right Wow and but here's the here's it was the best vision America ever made because it did two things simultaneously that economists tells you can't have first of all it raised the growth rate of the whole economy so much so that the best calculations by the economic historians are that that one decision giving a free high school education every kid in America gradually it began to accumulate right that accounts for most of American economic growth throughout the 20th century that is it was a huge effect essentially doubled our rate of growth so everybody was better off and at the same time it leveled the playing field because the poor kids got it just as well as the rich kids economists say you've got to choose efficiency or equity but that kind of investment was both it was it raised equity and raised efficiency and but here's the point I want to make from a political science point of view it did not come from Cambridge Mass or from Washington it came from folks in small towns in the middle of America trying to figure out how can we solve this problem of our kids here in Topeka or east elbow or was it mostly at the state level or even the local level local level spread to the state level eventually was such a good idea that it spread across the country and and eventually you know became normative and so in then right by our time you think God must have invented them yeah the high school but no it was invented by people trying to Americans try to solve a problem very much like the problem we have now so I think we could do this it's not like I'm saying America has to become Sweden right I'm saying we have to become like we have done in the past yeah that's so interesting I've been really right I should meet something with that I've never read is there like one moment where it succeeds and catches on or is there one proselytize er for it or is it just a more general um there's grass roots and if there's a lot of there are a number of I'm sure there are books about it we're gonna take a maked minute because I made an Alzheimer's moment and now it's okay we can but yeah I mean actually this is the one it's too early to say much more than what I'm gonna say now but I thought that our kids is probably the last book I've ever written but I've gotten interested in how that turn at the turn of the last century happened and so maybe I'm gonna that's gonna be the next project I made sure that that's not very interesting actually it was I mean I I've not really read this in any careful way but I don't have the sense that that's been the focus that most of the historians or social scientists have worked on that period and so in that respect it would be very interesting to yeah well I mean the experts know it's true I mean I'm not making this up yeah but I thought you but it's not the kind of if you just read up on that period that's not the focus of it and in writing history books my sense is or you know in biographies or whatever it's it's it's so relevant if you're trying to think how we solve our problems now which is why I'm now spending most of my time I do get called by people in Congress and both sides of the aisle and by presidential candidates and so on but really I'm if the problem I'm worried about and indeed if the if the if the resolution of these big negative changes that I've talked about the collapse of community and the growing inequality and segregation of society and the collapse of family and so on if we're going to solve those problems I honestly think it's gonna come from decent people in local and state level affairs I don't even just just mean government getting I'm working with a group in New Hampshire which is cross it's a cross-party group with lots of senior political leaders from both sides of the aisle and local religious people and local you know business people and so on their object is to try to narrow the opportunity gap in New Hampshire well I don't mean they're gonna do it I don't know what they're going to do it but they've spent hours and hours and hours planning experimental projects let's in this let's try early child education here let's try try mentoring here let's try community colleges here and I'm betting that out of that will come some interesting ideas which then may get picked up in you know Arizona or Massachusetts or whatever that's the way Americans have historically solve problems yes sir this is related with slightly different you so you've talked for many years many decades and seen generations of college students right grad students I guess come and go just curious is someone who hasn't been privy to that and a regular basis for decades I think a lot of our viewers might be curious what conclusions do you draw I mean are you I think your own story is so interesting from the late fifties early sixties of changing your focus and sort of going off on what might have must have been a kind of unexpected path I suppose yeah it sounds like your mother-in-law didn't didn't think it was maybe the right path what has the sense maybe this is suddenly unfair that the kids are more I don't know tracked today and more purposeful for better and worse I think and more less likely to take risks and to experiment in terms of their own careers maybe that's not true I'm just curious what you what you think and when you would recommend to people when you have some 20 year olds or 27 year olds watching sort of how to how to think about their own careers and their own public lives as well as their careers I mean yeah I have to be given some qualifications um yeah with a caveat that all this of course is you know whatever you know you'd have to know each kid to obviously give him good well it's not like that I mean I do think that there is it has been a narrowing of people's horizons but not that's not their fault that's because I was coming at a really great time in American history I mean we thought we were this is this is the early 60s this is not the late 60s and so we were coming out of a pretty comfortable period we knew that there were major problems the country had that's the that was a generation that gave rise to the women's revolution and the and the and and the civil rights revolution so on so we knew there was racism we knew their problems but we also thought we can fix this and we were we were sort of basically comfortable because we're coming out of an era of prosperity why Alysha why the shared prosperity that we both had an obligation to try to figure out how to solve some of our country's problems and also had the ability to do that we were not at all cynical that's the that that's the thing we were right but we just well I heard now if somebody said the same thing went to this inauguration they'd say oh you know what apologies are always saying that but they didn't have the almost religious experience that I had right that I'm gonna he's persuaded me I'm gonna and he was a flawed person I'm not trying to say it was not a flawed person but the fact the matter is I I'm so upset that keep my kids that age now don't have the possibility of experiencing that sense that I did that I could use my talents to try to help the country they don't have that I think they did for a minute in 2009 and people think yeah here Obama to John Kennedy yeah I do think they did actually obviously people got mobilized young people go there right um I do i but you know the we know what the countries because I want to make sure we I meant to make sure I'm not blaming those kids I'm trying to say they come out of an experience a much more intense and economically fraught and politically fraught period then I came out of so it's not like you know my generation was great and they're bad it's that the our experiences led us to have one kind of outlook look the kids that I teach at Harvard in I teach my undergraduate seminar in my home and and we it's like out of the 1950's right we take a tea break and my wife breaks fresh cookies and we all and and that that those kids are just wonderful kids I would pay Harvard a lot to be allowed to teach those kids and and they do call Harvard doesn't need the money said I don't know but I mean they go on to do wonderful there I'm really privileged right so three of the people are now serving in Congress came out of that little seminar it's a seven or fifteen people three people in Congress when I spoke to the White House not long ago ten percent of all the White House staff that senior staff came out of that seminar so these are wonderful kids they really I'm so I'm seeing a select portion even within however I'm saying the people who are the most interested in solving solving public problems so yeah so now let me put myself in the shoes of let me try to be Bobby Putnam yeah that'd be from the from the 60s but now I hope I would have enough self-confidence and enough knowledge of history that's this is not science fiction I'm talking about Americans have done these kind of not every day and we're not a perfect people we have actually looked at problems that figured out how to fix them and that sense is just so missing from our current dialogue today that you know if you're lucky enough to go to college any college a good college but not so good college you're you're if you go to college and finish college you're automatically in the top third of American society period so that's all this talk about in college degrees not worth anything not true you're gonna do fine relax a little bit and think not only about how you can make a living I understand the importance of that I've got seven grandchildren they're all worried about how to make a living but relax a little bit and think about how you can help the country and that's what I was fortunate enough to be able to do it's been fun that's a great way I would stand and I think that's very good advice actually and so thank you for joining me today thank you for giving that advice but more importantly though letting people see what it means to seriously investigate these problems and do so with a view towards solutions even though I'm a conservative I'm probably closer to you than Charles Murray and this something a little maybe Charles was half joking and of course Bohr being whatever didn't want to get into the argument then but there is something a little yes we should we part of America really is feeling that we can analyze these problems correctly but then do something about them understanding all the limitations Bob Putnam thanks so much for joining me today and thank you for joining us on conversations

Channel: Conversations with Bill Kristol

Views: 40,229

Rating: 4.7815442 out of 5

Keywords: William Kristol, Harvard University, Bowling Alone, Social Science, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Robert D. Putnam

Id: 2ZHZc-kcyQQ

Length: 70min 25sec (4225 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 13 2016