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Appendix: Summary

Tale of Two Cities: Civic Health in Miami and Minneapolis-St. Paul

January 24, 2011

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The analysis of the demography of civic engagement in both Minneapolis-St. Paul and Miami suggests a limited role for variables that have traditionally been used to explain patterns of engagement. This is best demonstrated by the limited explanatory power of all the demographic variables on the civic engagement indicators. Moreover, irrespective of the demographic groups examined, civic engagement levels were consistently higher in Minneapolis-St. Paul than in Miami. In both cities, education and age emerged as the strongest predictors of civic engagement. However, these effects appeared to be much stronger in Minneapolis-St. Paul than in Miami.

To demonstrate these effects, consider two individuals who are college educated, in the highest income group, older and who are native-born citizens. In other words, the two individuals possess the demographic characteristics that ought to produce higher levels of civic engagement. These individuals are alike in every way save for the fact that one resides in Minneapolis-St. Paul and one in Miami. What effect does simply residing in Minneapolis-St. Paul and in Miami have on civic engagement? Appendix Figure 9 shows the probability for each individual being civically engaged for each item. By way of contrast, Appendix Figure 10 reports the probabilities for individuals in both cities who had less than a high school education, in the lowest income group, the youngest age group, and non-citizens.37

The civic engagement gap between the two cities is less the result of less educated, poorer, younger, non-native U.S citizens in Miami not being civically engaged relative to their counterparts in Minneapolis-St. Paul. The differences in the probability of being civically engaged are negligible, except in the case of being connected with social networks (which is higher in Minneapolis-St. Paul) and attending to public affairs (which is higher in Miami). Rather, the gap is the result of better educated, afﬂuent, older individuals who are native-born U.S. citizens in Miami not engaging at the levels their status would predict if they resided in Minneapolis-St. Paul. No gap appears among these individuals in the two cities for attending to public affairs, voting, and being connected to a social network. But for all the other civic engagement indicators the gap is considerable. Across the remaining six indicators, better educated, afﬂuent, older individuals who are native-born citizens were, on average, 20 percentage points more likely to be civically engaged in Minneapolis-St. Paul than their counterparts in Miami. The largest gap being 28 percentage points for volunteering, and the smallest being 12 percentage points for donating to charity. The tale of civic engagement in these two cities is more about differences in civic engagement among higher status individuals in each city, than it is about high status/low status differences within each city.

Appendix: Demography, Citizenship

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