Why we need to think again about the decline in social capital

In the 1990s, the sociologist Robert Putnam popularized the notion that there had been a large decline in social capital, compared to that which existed prior to the 1970s. But has social capital actually fallen? In new research, which uses four decades worth of national survey data, April K. Clark finds that not all aspects of social and civic life have been in decline; the greatest fall has been in trust. She also writes that this fall in trust is not due to the aging of the more civically minded World War II generation, as many scholars have argued, but due to differences in educational attainment, race, and religious preferences.