Another important aspect of civic health is the degree to which citizens work collaboratively on local issues. The public work composite measure identifies individuals who both attend meetings and work with neighbors to fix or improve something. This measure reflects lower participation than social connectedness with 4.7% of Americans nationally meeting the definition. Though 4.7% is still a small percentage of the total population, it is important to keep in mind that this represents 11.2 million people who are attending meetings and working at the local and grassroots level to solve public problems. In Massachusetts, there is a promising higher rate of 5.7% of residents who are both attending meetings and working with neighbors to address community issues.

At the national level, we see that public work is also strongly correlated with education level. Only 1.2% of adults without high school diplomas met the criteria, rising to 9.4% of college graduates. This means that America’s venues of public work are dominated by the middle-class. When examining trends along lines of race and ethnicity, Native Americans are most likely to meet the definition of public work at 6.2%. It is also found that married people are three times more likely to participate in this way as single people. There is also a steep age curve, with just 1.3% of teenagers meeting the definition, rising to a peak of 6.8% for ages 55-64. To sum up, middle-aged, educated, married couples seemed especially active in this arena.



Public work was strong in Massachusetts, but again, there are interesting gaps along demographic lines. Just 2.4% of 20-24 year olds met the criteria for public work, whereas 8.7% of those ages 55-64 were engaged in public work. Education again was a strong predictor, with 10% of college graduates meeting the criteria, as opposed to no one in the sample with less than a high school
diploma. As opposed to other forms of participation with regional divides, cities and suburbs in Massachusetts showed the same rate of public work.

Attending Community Meetings
When we break down the public work criteria, and look separately at each indicator, we also see interesting trends. From 2006 to 2010, Massachusetts ranked considerably higher than the nation on percentages of residents who attended community meetings.

Below is the historical trend demonstrating how Massachusetts compares to the United States on attending community meetings from 2006 to 2010.



Working with Neighbors in Massachusetts
The rate of neighbors working together to solve community problems reflects a desire to work toward a solution and is a critical mark of vibrant civic health. Something as simple as how residents work together can have significant implications for community vitality. Research produced by NCoC, exploring the link between civic engagement and economic resilience, demonstrated that, “an increase in one point in the state’s rate of working with neighbors was associated with a decrease of 0.256 percentage points in the unemployment rate when the economic factors were controlled.”(9)



This is important to bear in mind as both the national and state’s rates of neighbors working together to solve community problems were down from 2009 levels. Nationally, 8.8% of neighbors were engaging with local problems in 2009 while 8.1% did so in 2010. In Massachusetts, 10.8% of people were working with their neighbors to solve their problems in 2009, but that rate fell to 7.9% in 2010, ranking the state in 31st place nationally.