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Appendix: Demography, Age

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

January 24, 2011

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Civic engagement tends to depend upon an individual’s position in the life cycle, with older people more engaged than younger people. Overall the patterns of civic engagement exhibited in Minneapolis-St. Paul and Miami follow this pattern, although there are some interesting exceptions (Appendix Table 3). For most of the civic engagement items, there is a steady increase from the youngest age group up until about the 55-64 age group, with some decline then occurring among the 65-74 and over 75 age groups on several of the items. Once again, with the exception of attending to public affairs, the levels of activity across age groups are higher in Minneapolis-St. Paul than in Miami.

This pattern was not as evident in Miami with respect to volunteering. Although only 17% of the youngest age group reported volunteering, this was just one percentage point less than that reported by 45-54 year olds. Furthermore, while only 47% of the youngest age group in Miami reported that they voted, this was higher than for the 25-34 and 35-44 age groups, and only four percentage points lower than for the 45-54 age group. Almost half of the youngest age group also reported attending to public affairs, which was considerably larger than that found nationally.

The one civic engagement item that did not consistently increase with age was being connected to social networks. Indeed, the youngest age group in Miami had the largest percentage of individuals (73%) who reported being frequently connected to social networks. In Minneapolis-St. Paul, there was essentially no relationship between age and being connected to a social network.

Age does have an effect across civic engagement items in both cities when we control for the other demographic groups (Appendix Figure 3). In fact, for Minneapolis-St. Paul, only two civic engagement items were not affected by age (attending to public affairs and being
socially connected). For three items (attending public meetings, working with neighbors, and donating), age had the largest effect of any demographic group. In Miami, age had a substantial effect, failing to achieve signiﬁcance for only two items (volunteering and attending to public affairs). And for three items (attending public meetings, donating, and voting), the effect of age was larger than any other demographic group.

Overall, the effects of age on civic engagement were larger in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Across the seven civic engagement items where age was statistically signiﬁcant, the average net effect of moving from the lowest to highest age group was 24 percentage points. The effect was smallest for volunteering (a difference of 8 percentage points) and was largest for donating to charity (a difference of 48 percentage points). In Miami, the average net effect was 19 percentage points, although that is largely due to the very substantial net effects of age on donating to charity and voting (differences of 45 and 46 percentage points, respectively). Furthermore, in Miami, age had the only negative effect on an item, with the youngest age group being 17 percentage points more likely than the oldest age group to be frequently connected with social networks.

Appendix: Demography, Income • Appendix: Demography, Gender

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