Community Engagement Indicators

In his influential book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam presented evidence that Americans are decreasing their participation in groups (civic, youth, recreational, etc.).  From the early days of European settlement in America, visitors like Alexis de Tocqueville identified community engagement as one of the defining characteristics of the country.  

There are few measures of civic engagement that are collected systematically at the county level.  In addition to one direct measure of community engagement (voter participation rates), we use some "proxies" for community engagement in this section of the website.  In particular, we present data on factors that may affect community engagement such as households in which English is not spoken exclusively, and having recently moved into the jurisdiction. 

With respect to these indicators:

• Voters in the six counties tend to vote at rates similar to their respective states.
• While Pierce County has consistently higher proportions of households that recently moved into the county compared to the rest of Wisconsin, the other counties in the region have similar or lower proportions than their state.
• Only Washington County Minnesota has a substantial proportion of households in which English is not spoken exclusively; the other five counties have substantially lower proportions of such households compared to their state.