My New Favorite Newspaper: The Ottawa Citizen
I guess that I'm not a loyal guy. I switch sports teams depending on who is winning. Now I've learned that I switch newspapers depending on who is writing interesting stuff. Dan Gardner is! Below he refers to a paper published in the December 2006 issue of the Journal of Economic History. A copy of the paper is posted here http://web.mit.edu/costa/www/papers.html
Forging A New Identity: The Costs and Benefits of Diversity in Civil War Combat Units for Black Slaves and Freemen.
(Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn). Journal of Economic History. 2006. 66(4): 936-62.
Dan also mentions our "forthcoming book". The book "Heroes and Cowards" will be published next year. If you like to bet, put your money on Princeton Press as the press that will publish it!
The math of diversity
Dan Gardner
The Ottawa Citizen
Friday, August 17, 2007
The official line on diversity has never wavered. Diversity is good. Diversity makes communities more interesting, livelier, stronger.
Lots of people have never bought that line. Diversity spells division, they insist. Diversity means cities fractured into ethnic enclaves and schools that resemble Babel. Diversity means the grandchildren of immigrants cheering when a foreign team beats Canadians.
With criticism of diversity treated as something unsavory, even racist, critics have tended to speak only sotto voce. But the decibels have grown a little since Robert Putnam, a Harvard political scientist, published the results of a new study that concludes the official line on diversity is wrong.
"Diversity, at least in the short run, seems to bring out the turtle in all of us," Putnam wrote.
Academics call the connections people form with others "social capital." In a community with plenty of social capital, people get involved and help out. Where social capital is low, people will step over your prostrate body as you bleed on the sidewalk. Putnam's massive study - based on more than 26,000 interviews - concludes that diversity diminishes social capital.
People trust each other less and they withdraw from their communities and neighbourhoods, Putnam wrote, leaving them to "huddle unhappily in front of the television."
Grim stuff. And credible, too. Robert Putnam is an acclaimed academic. In the 1990s, he shared thoughts with Bill Clinton in the White House. He's also a liberal who was so bothered by his findings that he delayed publishing his research so he could look for errors or alternative explanations. He didn't find any.
Putnam's study is also credible because it's only the latest to come to the same conclusion. "There are costs to diversity," says economist Matthew Kahn from his office at the University of California at Los Angeles. In 2002, Kahn and his wife, fellow economist Dora Costa, reviewed the literature and found that in the previous five years, 15 papers had explored the effects of diversity. All found diversity weakens communities.
People living in diverse settings are less likely to trust others, to give to charity, to volunteer, or even to fill out census forms. In a phrase, they are worse citizens.
So social science has spoken. Diversity divides. And multiculturalism is madness.
Well, not quite. That's the crude version of the research touted by conservative bloggers and columnists.
One fact that should never be overlooked is that diversity isn't permanent. People from different ethnic groups meet, talk and move in next door. Some marry and have kids. Lines shift and blur. Sometimes they disappear: There was a time not so long ago that Italians were a despised, marginalized, ghettoized people within North America, but today they are the old stock wrinkling their noses at the strange habits of newcomers.
This is why Putnam is careful to note that the costs of diversity apply "at least in the short term."
There's another kicker conservatives have missed. Most of the research has looked at the effect of ethnic diversity. But some researchers, including Kahn and Costa, have also looked at the effects of income diversity. And not only did they find that it, too, reduced social capital, "we found bigger effects for income diversity," Kahn says. Conservative pundits have somehow overlooked that finding.
The most important thing to bear in mind, however, is that while there may be costs associated with diversity, there are also benefits. "Economists yell and scream that every treatment has to be evaluated for both costs and benefits," Kahn says, sounding rather exasperated.
Quantifying the benefits of diversity isn't easy. What's the value of the diverse restaurants in a diverse city? How can we count and weigh the new ideas generated when diverse perspectives are shared? Jane Jacobs worked on these questions. So have others. But the math of diversity remains elusive.
Kahn and Costa made a brilliant contribution to this effort by looking at the experience of black soldiers in the American Civil War.
I know that sounds obscure but it's actually quite relevant. In the Union army, soldiers served in companies of 100 men and for a long list of reasons - which Kahn and Costa detail in a forthcoming book - the way those companies were assembled made them an almost ideal experiment in the effects of diversity.
In this experiment, a homogenous company is one made up mostly of former slaves from the South or mostly black freemen from the North. A diverse company was one that mixed the two.
For the army, diversity was not good. More soldiers went AWOL in diverse companies, the researchers found. More deserted. "In the short run, the combat unit benefited from homogeneity fostering social capital and thus minimizing shirking," Kahn and Costa write.
But diversity was good for soldiers. Those who served in diverse companies were more likely to move to a new town after the war, to choose a new name, to become literate. "In the long run," Kahn and Costa write, "men's human capital and information was best improved by serving in heterogeneous companies."
All this makes intuitive sense. Put dissimilar people together and they simply will not interact as well as a bunch of guys from the old home town. But give it time. Exposure to a mix of cultures, experiences and ideas broadens and improves us in ways that hangin' with the homeys doesn't.
As with anything that carries costs and benefits, the trick with diversity is to make sure the benefits outweigh the costs. How do we do that? That's a huge question and I have no problem admitting I can't answer it.
I am pretty sure about the first step, however. We have to acknowledge that the rosy official line on diversity is far too simplistic. We also have to realize that the same is true of the line the critics are pushing.
Once we are rid of dumb dichotomies we can get on with making the most of diversity.
Dan Gardner's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
E-mail: dgardner@thecitizen.canwest.com
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007
Forging A New Identity: The Costs and Benefits of Diversity in Civil War Combat Units for Black Slaves and Freemen.
(Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn). Journal of Economic History. 2006. 66(4): 936-62.
Dan also mentions our "forthcoming book". The book "Heroes and Cowards" will be published next year. If you like to bet, put your money on Princeton Press as the press that will publish it!
The math of diversity
Dan Gardner
The Ottawa Citizen
Friday, August 17, 2007
The official line on diversity has never wavered. Diversity is good. Diversity makes communities more interesting, livelier, stronger.
Lots of people have never bought that line. Diversity spells division, they insist. Diversity means cities fractured into ethnic enclaves and schools that resemble Babel. Diversity means the grandchildren of immigrants cheering when a foreign team beats Canadians.
With criticism of diversity treated as something unsavory, even racist, critics have tended to speak only sotto voce. But the decibels have grown a little since Robert Putnam, a Harvard political scientist, published the results of a new study that concludes the official line on diversity is wrong.
"Diversity, at least in the short run, seems to bring out the turtle in all of us," Putnam wrote.
Academics call the connections people form with others "social capital." In a community with plenty of social capital, people get involved and help out. Where social capital is low, people will step over your prostrate body as you bleed on the sidewalk. Putnam's massive study - based on more than 26,000 interviews - concludes that diversity diminishes social capital.
People trust each other less and they withdraw from their communities and neighbourhoods, Putnam wrote, leaving them to "huddle unhappily in front of the television."
Grim stuff. And credible, too. Robert Putnam is an acclaimed academic. In the 1990s, he shared thoughts with Bill Clinton in the White House. He's also a liberal who was so bothered by his findings that he delayed publishing his research so he could look for errors or alternative explanations. He didn't find any.
Putnam's study is also credible because it's only the latest to come to the same conclusion. "There are costs to diversity," says economist Matthew Kahn from his office at the University of California at Los Angeles. In 2002, Kahn and his wife, fellow economist Dora Costa, reviewed the literature and found that in the previous five years, 15 papers had explored the effects of diversity. All found diversity weakens communities.
People living in diverse settings are less likely to trust others, to give to charity, to volunteer, or even to fill out census forms. In a phrase, they are worse citizens.
So social science has spoken. Diversity divides. And multiculturalism is madness.
Well, not quite. That's the crude version of the research touted by conservative bloggers and columnists.
One fact that should never be overlooked is that diversity isn't permanent. People from different ethnic groups meet, talk and move in next door. Some marry and have kids. Lines shift and blur. Sometimes they disappear: There was a time not so long ago that Italians were a despised, marginalized, ghettoized people within North America, but today they are the old stock wrinkling their noses at the strange habits of newcomers.
This is why Putnam is careful to note that the costs of diversity apply "at least in the short term."
There's another kicker conservatives have missed. Most of the research has looked at the effect of ethnic diversity. But some researchers, including Kahn and Costa, have also looked at the effects of income diversity. And not only did they find that it, too, reduced social capital, "we found bigger effects for income diversity," Kahn says. Conservative pundits have somehow overlooked that finding.
The most important thing to bear in mind, however, is that while there may be costs associated with diversity, there are also benefits. "Economists yell and scream that every treatment has to be evaluated for both costs and benefits," Kahn says, sounding rather exasperated.
Quantifying the benefits of diversity isn't easy. What's the value of the diverse restaurants in a diverse city? How can we count and weigh the new ideas generated when diverse perspectives are shared? Jane Jacobs worked on these questions. So have others. But the math of diversity remains elusive.
Kahn and Costa made a brilliant contribution to this effort by looking at the experience of black soldiers in the American Civil War.
I know that sounds obscure but it's actually quite relevant. In the Union army, soldiers served in companies of 100 men and for a long list of reasons - which Kahn and Costa detail in a forthcoming book - the way those companies were assembled made them an almost ideal experiment in the effects of diversity.
In this experiment, a homogenous company is one made up mostly of former slaves from the South or mostly black freemen from the North. A diverse company was one that mixed the two.
For the army, diversity was not good. More soldiers went AWOL in diverse companies, the researchers found. More deserted. "In the short run, the combat unit benefited from homogeneity fostering social capital and thus minimizing shirking," Kahn and Costa write.
But diversity was good for soldiers. Those who served in diverse companies were more likely to move to a new town after the war, to choose a new name, to become literate. "In the long run," Kahn and Costa write, "men's human capital and information was best improved by serving in heterogeneous companies."
All this makes intuitive sense. Put dissimilar people together and they simply will not interact as well as a bunch of guys from the old home town. But give it time. Exposure to a mix of cultures, experiences and ideas broadens and improves us in ways that hangin' with the homeys doesn't.
As with anything that carries costs and benefits, the trick with diversity is to make sure the benefits outweigh the costs. How do we do that? That's a huge question and I have no problem admitting I can't answer it.
I am pretty sure about the first step, however. We have to acknowledge that the rosy official line on diversity is far too simplistic. We also have to realize that the same is true of the line the critics are pushing.
Once we are rid of dumb dichotomies we can get on with making the most of diversity.
Dan Gardner's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
E-mail: dgardner@thecitizen.canwest.com
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007
posted by Matthew Kahn at 4:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home