IN PLACES WITH A FRAYING SOCIAL FABRIC, A POLITICAL BACKLASH RISES
Donald Trump gets strong support where churches, civic groups and safety net are in trouble; discombobulated Reading, Pa."
"Working-class neighborhoods, in particular white ones hit hard by the decline of the U.S. industrial base, are crumbling under the weight of deepening social problems.
The buckling of social institutions fundamental to American civic life is deepening a sense of pessimism and disorientation, while adding fuel to this year’s rise of political populists like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
Here and across the U.S., key measures of civic engagement ranging from church attendance to civic-group membership to bowling-league participation to union activity are slipping. Unlocked doors have given way to anxiety about strangers. In Reading, tension between longtime white residents and Hispanic newcomers has added to the unease.
In Berks County, once famous for the Reading Railroad stop on the Monopoly board game, social ills have been exacerbated by a 30% decline in manufacturing jobs and 6% fall in inflation-adjusted median income since 1995.
In 2014, 55.2% of the white women in Berks County who gave birth hadn’t finished college and were unmarried, up from 16.5% in 1980, according to Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Family and Marriage Research. Single mothers had a median income of just $22,378 in 2014, less than half that of the typical household in Berks County and the U.S. overall.
The number of civic, professional and business organizations in Berks and Schuylkill counties declined to 131 in 2014 from 156 in 2000, according to Pennsylvania State University’s Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development. The number of unions and other labor groups fell to 29 from 41.
Some economists say the decline of institutions that fortify communities has a negative impact on household income. Without the strong support system from those networks, known as social capital, some people miss work more often during times of need, and their children have fewer extracurricular activities and other ways to get ahead.
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Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton say the surge in drug deaths and suicides among middle-aged whites nationally began around 2000, when the economy fell into recession, Chinese imports began to surge and manufacturing jobs started to decline sharply.
Laid-off workers turned increasingly to Social Security disability payments and got prescriptions for painkillers to treat back pain from years of factory work. Mr. Deaton, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2015, sees a “strong correlation” between declining employment locally and deaths from suicide, drugs and alcohol.
“When you lose the family unit and you lose the church community, you are losing a whole lot,” says Bonnie Stock, a retired teacher in Reading and Trump supporter, who says the church where she was baptized is dying from lack of young members. “People are looking at Trump because most of us see this [country] isn’t working,” she says."
Donald Trump gets strong support where churches, civic groups and safety net are in trouble; discombobulated Reading, Pa."
"Working-class neighborhoods, in particular white ones hit hard by the decline of the U.S. industrial base, are crumbling under the weight of deepening social problems.
The buckling of social institutions fundamental to American civic life is deepening a sense of pessimism and disorientation, while adding fuel to this year’s rise of political populists like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
Here and across the U.S., key measures of civic engagement ranging from church attendance to civic-group membership to bowling-league participation to union activity are slipping. Unlocked doors have given way to anxiety about strangers. In Reading, tension between longtime white residents and Hispanic newcomers has added to the unease.
In Berks County, once famous for the Reading Railroad stop on the Monopoly board game, social ills have been exacerbated by a 30% decline in manufacturing jobs and 6% fall in inflation-adjusted median income since 1995.
In 2014, 55.2% of the white women in Berks County who gave birth hadn’t finished college and were unmarried, up from 16.5% in 1980, according to Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Family and Marriage Research. Single mothers had a median income of just $22,378 in 2014, less than half that of the typical household in Berks County and the U.S. overall.
The number of civic, professional and business organizations in Berks and Schuylkill counties declined to 131 in 2014 from 156 in 2000, according to Pennsylvania State University’s Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development. The number of unions and other labor groups fell to 29 from 41.
Some economists say the decline of institutions that fortify communities has a negative impact on household income. Without the strong support system from those networks, known as social capital, some people miss work more often during times of need, and their children have fewer extracurricular activities and other ways to get ahead.
...
Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton say the surge in drug deaths and suicides among middle-aged whites nationally began around 2000, when the economy fell into recession, Chinese imports began to surge and manufacturing jobs started to decline sharply.
Laid-off workers turned increasingly to Social Security disability payments and got prescriptions for painkillers to treat back pain from years of factory work. Mr. Deaton, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2015, sees a “strong correlation” between declining employment locally and deaths from suicide, drugs and alcohol.
“When you lose the family unit and you lose the church community, you are losing a whole lot,” says Bonnie Stock, a retired teacher in Reading and Trump supporter, who says the church where she was baptized is dying from lack of young members. “People are looking at Trump because most of us see this [country] isn’t working,” she says."
