Collaborative Research: Civic Community and Civic Welfare: A Study Based on Economic Census

该项目的基本论点是，地方资本主义和公民参与与有益的公民福利结果有关。先前的研究表明，公民社区观点作为新古典主义发展与变化理论的替代方案具有很大的前景。尽管如此，要改善地方资本主义、公民参与和公民福利等关键概念的衡量标准，还有很多工作要做。该项目将使用美国人口普查局经济研究中心的设施。它将把覆盖范围从农村小城镇扩大到大都市地区，允许在多个时间点进行测量，并探索在构建公民福利和公民参与指标时使用十年一次的人口普查家庭微观数据。我们还建议扩大公民福利的衡量标准，包括地方公民基础设施、公共安全和公共健康。这将利用经济普查微数据和中心关于地方政府的数据，以及人口普查长期微数据进行探索性工作。为了验证这一基本论点，研究人员将建立一个包含美国6000多个城镇的数据库。在选定的大城市地区，他们将在人口普查区层面进行探索性分析，确定大城市环境中的公民空间。除去标准控制变量的影响，随着时间的推移，当地资本主义和公民参与（例如，小型的、面向当地的制造企业和零售企业、家庭农场、公民参与的宗教教派和其他慈善协会和组织）的措施的变化被假设为与公民福利措施的变化呈正相关，这些措施包括降低婴儿死亡率、提高收入水平、减少外迁、增加学校和图书馆的人均支出。

The fundamental thesis of this project is that local capitalism and civic engagement are associated with beneficial civic welfare outcomes. Previous research has shown that a civic community perspective has substantial promise as an alternative to neoclassical theories of development and change. Still, much remains to be done to improve measures of the key concepts of local capitalism, civic engagement, and civic welfare. This project will use facilities at the Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Bureau of the Census. It will expand coverage from rural small towns to metropolitan areas, allow measures at multiple points in time, and explore the use of decennial Census household microdata in the construction of measures of civic welfare and civic engagement. We also propose to expand measures of civic welfare to encompass local civic infrastructure, public safety, and public health. This will be done with Economic Census microdata and Center data on local governments, as well as exploratory work with population Census long-form microdata. To test the basic thesis, the investigators will develop a database on more than 6,000 cities and towns in the U.S. Within selected larger metropolitan areas, they will conduct exploratory analyses at the Census tract level, identifying civic spaces within larger urban settings. Net of the effects of standard control variables, changes over time in measures of local capitalism and civic engagement (e.g., small, locally-oriented manufacturing establishments and retail establishments, family farms, civically-engaged religious denominations, and other charitable associations and organizations) are hypothesized to vary positively with changes in measures of civic welfare including lower infant mortality, higher income levels, less out-migration, more per capita expenditures on schools and libraries.