Research Paper on Heterogeneity and Social Capital

Greetings again everyone. Usually, I won't have the time to create new posts in consecutive days, but I feel that these two research papers which I've obtained must be addressed and made available for use by any who are interested. I'm continuing along the theme that I covered late last night, the negative effects of increased diversity - what I would call being "diversely challenged," as it certainly is not a benefit for a state - and the propensity for people to identify with others similar to themselves, their own kin and ethnic grouping [nepotism, ethnic affiliation].

Before I delve into the first research paper, let me make this clear for anyone out there that has a further interest in this topic, the research papers that I will be discussing are but two of many, many research papers that have been conducted in the past and achieved the same results, i.e. the negative implications of increased diversity upon social cohesion and economic development. I have citations to many of these articles if anyone is interested, just leave a comment below this post requesting the names of the papers and I'll be happy to oblige. Concordantly, if anyone has discovered other research papers regarding these topics that I may not have, please feel free to contact me and let me know by leaving a comment. I'm always trying to expand my research base.

Alright, onto the paper. Here is the source for the paper. The paper is titled "Civic Engagement and Community Heterogeneity: An Economist's Perspective" written by Matthew E. Kahn of Tufts University.

Kahn starts out in his introduction by making the simple point that critical to the performance of any economy are the institutions that base that economy. The institutions themselves are subsequently dependent upon social capital, which is how he creates the link between social capital and economic capital [i.e. economic development]. He makes the case that high levels of trust - something not available in diverse societies - increase economic growth, financial development, spur consumption on public goods etc. but equally as important is that he proves something I had mentioned last night, that increased diversity leads to less responsible and non-representative governments. In fact, in the first paragraph of his introduction, he states that "low levels of trust predict less efficient judiciaries, more corruption [yay, let's celebrate the benefits of diversity!], and lower-quality government bureaucracies." Boy do I feel vindicated now! All this in the very first paragraph of this 26 page research paper, quite the scathing expose and denunciation of multicultist dogma I would say! Therefore, before we even get into examining the hard data of the report, we find that increased diversity is detrimental and antithetical towards social capital, which in turn lowers community cohesion, lessens economic productivity and damages governmental accountability.

Kahn even goes so far as to summarize that 15 studies done prior to his own examining the effects of heterogeneity upon social capital all share a single common theme: more homogeneous communities foster greater levels of social capital production. [P. 3]

Towards the bottom of the same page, Kahn makes the point that people tend to self-segregate themselves amongst their own kin because of "shared interests, socialization to the same cultural norms, and greater empathy toward individuals that remind them of themselves." I would pretty much agree with all of the points made here except for one, the socialization aspect. Indeed, I agree that people are socialized into groups that forge a common identity, yes, but that in itself is the product of something far more central to human nature and the human condition. Ethnic background, shared genetic history influence that sense of socialization, these are the factors that enable that society, that group of individuals to first come together because they have a similar background, culture, tribe, physical features [this is related to his third point, greater empathy for someone that looks like ourselves, phenotype] etc. something that they can all commonly unite around and forge an identity. Only once that is accomplished [the formation of a society] does the process of socialization actually begin. This phenomenon of creating societies out of genetic affiliation will be discussed in my second article which is why I brought up the point now.

As I'm reading this article right now, I highly urge others to do the same because Kahn sprinkles aspects of the other 15 research papers into his own paper, you'll find names and citations to other studies that may be of use. In summarizing his own summaries of other research papers, we arrive at conclusions such as:
1. organizational membership is lower in metropolitan areas of high diversity
2. the rate of response to the 2000 Census is lower in areas with high ethnic fragmentation [lower willingness to co-operate with government procedures]
3. propensity to redistribute income is higher when the community is homogeneous [people trust one another more with their money]
4. When the ethnic identity of taxpayers and students is heterogeneous [i.e. the taxpayer is white, the student is hispanic], willingness to contribute public funds to education is lower
5. "share of spending on productive public goods such as education, roads, sewers, and trash pickup is inversely related to the area's ethnic fragmentation, even after controlling for other socioeconomic and demographic characteristics." [P. 5]<--I love this quote! 6. "when individuals interact with people who look like them, levels of trust in the community are higher." [P. 5] Once again emphasizing the point I made earlier regarding the importance of phenotype and genotype in determining a society's level of trust. 7. regarding micro-finance loans, Kahn quotes another paper by saying that "If there is strong social capital within the group providing and receiving loans[i.e. high homogeneity], then default is lower as well because altruism, peer pressure and social sanctions enforce repayment." [P. 5]<--I am no economic expert by any standard of measurement, but I hope others find it ironically sad that in our time of recession, government agencies and the mass media are still enforcing the ideology of diversity on us despite the fact that it has probably contributed to the economic circumstances we have and may even exacerbate the economic recession we face. It is a wonder why no one has the temerity to discuss this factually proven statement on any news network, especially in the precarious times that we live in. In Kahn's analysis, he uses figures from five different surveys that have collected data from the 1970's until the 1990's regarding volunteering and organization membership etc. He asserts that "birthplace fragmentation [the diversity of birthplaces] is a significant predictor of volunteering in the CPS and of membership in the GSS [these two are studies]." [P. 6-7] Furthermore, "Racial fragmentation is a a significant predictor of volunteering in the DDB and of membership in ANES." [P. 7] Therefore, Kahn comes to the undeniable conclusion that the "relatively small decline in social capital from the 1970's to 1990 - and rising heterogeneity explains these declines very well." [P. 7]* The only minor comment that I'd include here is that Kahn includes the Gini coefficient [income inequality] as a factor of heterogeneity, however that does not reduce the significance of ethnic heterogeneity as a factor in the loss of social capital. What may be of great use to other European ethnic nationalists is his table on page 24 of his paper that pits ethnic heterogeneity vs. participation rates in organizations. I do not have access to the specific figures for each nation, but from extrapolating on the points of the nations in the plot, I can get a general idea of the significance of income inequality vs. ethnic heterogeneity in influencing the participation rates within these states. However, it should be said that these are only approximate figures and I am no genius mathematician! Okay, from those two graphs, I managed to calculate among the 14 countries averages for participation [0.27], Gini co-efficient scores [29.6] and ethnic heterogeneity [10.3]. As I'd imagine, I'm going to take all the nations with above average scores in both their Gini co-efficient and their ethnic heterogeneity, average out their participation rates and see which one differs the most from the average participation rate. That should yield which one has greater influence over the other if my brain is thinking properly today! Alright, so when I took all the nations who have a Gini co-efficient above 29.6, added their participation rates and divided by the number of nations to get the average, the average participation rate was 0.25, slightly lower than the total average of all nations [0.27]. In reality, all of the nations that had a co-efficient above 29.6 had participation rates that were around 0.2 and lower, the reason why the 0.25 score was attained was because 2 of the 8 nations - Sweden and Norway - have very high participation rates [0.4+], so in reality, the differential is likely to be greater. Be that as it may, let's move onto our average for nations that had ethnic heterogeneity above the average of 10.3. Their average participation rate was 0.24; it's slightly lower than the average participation rate for the high Gini countries which means that nations with higher ethnic heterogeneity have their participation rate scores lowered more than by Gini co-efficients. However, this too is skewed because Sweden has an extremely high, the highest participation rate. If we were to take out to the two "anomalies" from the study, Norway and Sweden in the Gini one and Sweden in the ethnic one to get a more accurate score, the average for the Gini would drastically reduce to 0.187, while for ethnic heterogeneity it would reduce to 0.173. Yet again, ethnic heterogeneity holds greater influence than the Gini co-efficient, but not by that much. All in all, I'd say it's relatively 50-50 distribution in how each influences participation rates, they're more or less equal with a slightly greater importance of ethnic heterogeneity in determining participation rates; what we should take away from this is that ethnic heterogeneity is a significant factor in influencing participation rates in Europe and hence carries consequences for social capital. The last portion of the article I believe is a tad antiquated and anachronistic considering we're trying to examine the modern implications of ethnic heterogeneity on social capital. I say this because he comes around to examining the American Civil War and rates of desertion, arrests etc. based on the company's homogeneity. Unsurprisingly, the greater the company homogeneity [both ethnic and other factors] reduced the above rates dramatically; heterogeneous units were 525% more likely to desert, 300% more likely to be arrested and 120% more likely to go AWOL. Ultimately, Kahn, just as disappointingly as Putnam concludes by getting on his knees and begging for mercy from the multicultists by making the inane argument that despite all of the blatant evidence above, that increased heterogeneity, especially ethnic heterogeneity has detrimental effects on social capital that is necessary for a successful community, economy and government to function, somehow....ethnic diversity might be good for businesses interacting with global trade because of their diverse outlook. I just can't see how hiring one Englishman, one Nigerian, one Japanese and one Brazilian makes your business more robust as opposed to having four Englishmen or four Brazilians... I'm sorry, but that minor argument could never ever come close to offsetting the hugely negative effects of diversity on the greater population; the possibility of a more "insightful" and diverse workforce goes nowhere close to alleviating the major problems created in communal trust, economic productivity and governmental accountability, not to mention the gradual replacement and displacement of European cultures and European people in their own lands.

I hope you've all enjoyed this post, it's taken me quite an amount of time to prepare so unfortunately, I'll have to move my post on the other article to tomorrow.