ABSTRACT
An important form of civic engagement in twentieth-century America has been the parent-teacher association (PTA), important not merely because it is one of the most common associational memberships but also because parental involvement in the educational process represents a particularly productive form of social capital. Social epidemiologists have shown that social ties have consequences even for physical morbidity and mortality. When economic and political negotiation is embedded in dense networks of social interaction, incentives for opportunism are reduced. People begin with familiar evidence on changing patterns of political participation, not least because it is immediately relevant to issues of democracy in the narrow sense. To assess changes in associational engagement accurately, however, one needs to consider broader demographic trends in American society. In America, at least, there is reason to suspect that this democratic disarray may be linked to a broad erosion of civic engagement that began a quarter-century ago.
