Does civic engagement help immunize a place against recession?

• stronger social networks make it easier for people to get re-employed;
• civic engagement helps generate skills and confidence that translate into employability;
• civic engagement helps spread information that make it easier for individuals to learn about job openings or training programs;
• civic engagement produces higher trust and higher trust leads to better economic performance (although social trust wasn’t directly measured in the CPS survey);
• governments are more responsible and responsive in high civic engagement states; or
• people in more engaged communities may feel greater community attachment which leads them to invest more locally.

Read more at Social Capital Blog

See also: Could Civic Engagement Be the Key to Economic Success? for more links to reports

Even at a time when the global economy has been buffeted by strong and dangerous forces, all communities have capital and skills that can be deployed to create or preserve jobs. Investors may be more willing to create jobs locally if they trust other people and the local government, if they feel attached to their community, if they know about opportunities and can disseminate information efficiently, and if they feel that the local workforce is skilled. All these factors correlate with civic engagement. Those correlations, plus the other evidence cited in this report, lend some plausibility to the thesis that civic health matters for economic resilience.