Diversity and Diminished Trust: Review of Studies Shows Only Small Correlation

It’s now been more than a decade since Robert Putnam, the Harvard political scientist behind the famous book Bowling Alone, reported a troubling finding that he had tried really, really hard to make go away: In census tracts with higher levels of ethnic diversity, people tended to report trusting each other less. Putnam didn’t use this as an argument for reducing immigration — to the contrary, he bent over backward to avoid that conclusion — but it was nonetheless clear that eroding social trust was a downside to immigration that we should pay attention to.

Putnam’s finding has continued to pop up in the immigration debate, even sparking a column last year from Noah Smith at Bloomberg View pointing out that, while some other research does back Putnam, “there are plenty of studies that don’t support Putnam’s conclusion — or even find the opposite.”

It’s now been more than a decade since Robert Putnam, the Harvard political scientist behind the famous book Bowling Alone, reported a troubling finding that he had tried really, really hard to make go away: In census tracts with higher levels of ethnic diversity, people tended to report trusting each other less. Putnam didn’t use this as an argument for reducing immigration — to the contrary, he bent over backward to avoid that conclusion — but it was nonetheless clear that eroding social trust was a downside to immigration that we should pay attention to.

Putnam’s finding has continued to pop up in the immigration debate, even sparking a column last year from Noah Smith at Bloomberg View pointing out that, while some other research does back Putnam, “there are plenty of studies that don’t support Putnam’s conclusion — or even find the opposite.”