A matter of respect

The murder rate in Britain fell by around a hundredfold from the middle ages to the mid-20th century. This fall is powerful testament to the ways in which, for the most part, people in modern societies have learnt to get along with each other.

But across nations, many of the traditional organisations and habits that helped us to live side by side are vanishing. Claims about their decline are familiar, but its sheer scale and rapidity merits repeating. In 1950, around three in four newborns were baptised, and their parents were regular churchgoers. This has fallen to around one in six, and in ten years the practice of baptism is expected to have almost completely disappeared in Britain.

Political parties face a similar scale of decline. In 1950, one in ten people were members of political parties. Today it is closer to one in 100 and falling. Similar trends can be picked out for many other traditional organisations, from the Women's Institute to—less precipitously—trade unions.



Yet other organisations have grown spectacularly over the same period. Membership of Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace increased six to sevenfold over the 1980s and 1990s. The National Trust and the RSPB have grown more than tenfold over the last 30 years, rising to over 3m and 1m members respectively. Volunteering is up. Charitable giving, in absolute terms, is up. Crime—an indicator of social stability—is sharply down, though violent "stranger" crime has fallen less. And, despite the decline of the church, ethical values appear relatively robust.

These mixed trends suggest that Britain's "social capital"—our networks and norms of trust and reciprocity—is undergoing transformation rather than simple decline. But there are three characteristics of this transformation that should still give us pause.

First, we are joining "chequebook" associations, which are very different from the organisations we are leaving. Such organisations do not attempt to balance interests and reach a consensus, and most members never attend a meeting or meet other members.

Second, levels of social trust between citizens—a key predictor of many economic and social outcomes—appear to have slipped, at least modestly. In the 1950s, nearly two thirds of citizens agreed with the question: "Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted?" By the mid-1990s this had fallen to less than a third.

Third, social capital is increasingly polarised along class lines. The idea of the old boys' club illustrates how social capital was always polarised—those in positions of power and wealth have always had larger and more valuable social networks. But over recent decades the differences have grown—the number of organisations that professionals join has gone up, but the average membership of those in intermediate and manual groups has fallen sharply. Similar polarities exist in size of social networks and social trust: people in poor neighbourhoods are far less likely to trust their neighbours despite seeing more of them.

Virtually all industrial nations have seen a decline in their traditional associations, notably the church, political parties and unions. But not all nations are on the same trajectory. The US has experienced declines on almost all measures of social capital—from how often family members sit down together for a meal to whether they think fellow Americans can be trusted. But in other nations, such as Sweden, the Netherlands and Japan, many forms of social capital have increased. For example, the percentage of Dutch saying that most other people could be trusted rose from 44 per cent in 1981 to 60 per cent in 2001, while among Americans it dropped from around the Dutch level in 1981 to 33 per cent by 2001.

The Swedes, Dutch and Japanese seem to be freeing themselves from the "one size fits all" organisations of the past just as we Anglo-Saxons are, yet they are finding other ways to reconnect with each other. The sociologist Bo Rothstein has called this the rise of "solidaristic individualism."

There are a number of reasons why academics and policymakers are tracking these trends with interest (about 300 scholarly articles on social capital are published a year—up tenfold from ten years ago). For a start, analyses from the World Bank and elsewhere indicate that social capital—particularly trust—has a substantial impact on economic growth. Econometric modelling by Paul Whitely in Britain concluded that social trust has a bigger impact on growth rates than education. This helps to explain the continued strong performance of the high-trust Scandinavian nations, as well as the strength of the tiger economies, and now China, relative to other regions of the world. Social capital and trust oil the wheels of an economy, speeding the flow of information and lowering transaction costs. Markets without trust between buyers and sellers are slowed by risk aversion and complex legal contracts.

Health outcomes are also strongly affected by social capital. Life expectancy and mental health are affected by both the size and quality of social networks. For example, the landmark Alameda county study in the US found that men and women who were socially isolated were 1.9 and 3.1 times respectively more likely to die in the following nine years than those with more social ties (the study controlled for smoking, alcohol intake, physical activity and other factors).

Similar impacts have been found on crime and education. Neighbourhoods with higher levels of cohesion and trust—where people describe their neighbourhood as "close knit" or "where people get along" have lower crime rates when the studies control for the starting crime rate. And in the US and Britain, children who go to schools in areas with higher levels of civic engagement attain significantly higher grades at 16, even when the studies control for the social and demographic characteristics of the area.

Of course, societies are changing in many ways, so a decline in social capital does not inevitably mean that growth, health, education and crime will change for the worse. But it is cause for concern.

Why is this happening? What is it that is driving changes in social capital? The main driver seems to be economic growth. Wealth is giving us choices—it allows us to cut free from the inconvenience of other people. We can have our own entertainment systems and a metal cocoon to travel around in. Our children no longer have to argue over what to watch on television since many of them have their own set.

But such privatised consumption also cuts us off from the satisfactions of a more social life. Some, notably the Scandinavians, are using their wealth to spend more time with each other instead.

Another factor that helps to explain the differences in national trends is inequality. Economic inequality stretches the social fabric, leaving citizens with less in common and less trusting of each other. (There is some evidence that ethnic differences present the same challenge.) But low social capital and trust may undermine support for collective public provision and may make inequality more acceptable, thus driving inequality rather than vice versa.

Other factors that have been blamed for declining social capital include urban sprawl and more commuting and television-watching. Such developments are at least partly a reflection of value-based choices that we are making as individuals and societies.

So how have moral values changed? Since 1981, the University of Michigan's world values surveys have asked respondents how acceptable certain behaviours are, such as lying in your own interest, accepting bribes or dropping litter. These values turn out to cluster into three groups.

One cluster is "personal-sexual" values, covering issues like homosexuality, divorce, abortion and euthanasia. Such acts have become almost universally more acceptable, with each generation taking and maintaining progressively more tolerant attitudes. As older generations die, the shift has been dramatic—though northern and Scandinavian countries maintain a large tolerance gap over their southern European neighbours. If an act takes place between consenting adults and does not harm anyone else, we are becoming more tolerant about it.

In contrast, attitudes towards overtly illegal acts with clear victims, such as joyriding, accepting bribes and drink-driving remain largely un-changed. Younger people are more tolerant of such acts but converge on the values of their parents as they age. Cross-national differences remain: Scandinavians are very intolerant of overtly illegal acts, despite their tolerance of personal-sexual acts; the reverse is true of southern Europeans.

But of most concern are changes in the third group of values: acts of self-interest that don't have a clear victim, such as keeping something you have found, cheating on your taxes or lying in your own interest. Unlike attitudes to acts with clear victims, tolerance for "victimless" acts of self-interest has increased, albeit not as much as for personal-sexual acts. Once again, younger people are much more tolerant of such acts, and though they become less tolerant as they age, they are not catching up with older generations, hence the slippage over time.

This pattern of value change may help to explain the gradual rise in public concerns about antisocial behaviour (ASB)—the "respect" agenda. Interestingly, many forms of ASB have fallen over the last ten years. Data from the English housing survey clearly show that problems relating to vandalism, noise and neighbours have fallen markedly in recent years.

Why then have public concerns about ASB, such as in the British crime survey, tended to increase? One interpretation is that while ASB in the neighbourhood has decreased, it has increased in town centres, transport hubs and other public and impersonal spaces. Such ASB is especially visible and so has a disproportionate impact on public perceptions. Town-centre ASB also tends to be aimed at public property and relative strangers rather than at private property and neighbours. In this sense it fits the wider pattern of value change—as long as there is no clearly identifiable victim, it is increasingly acceptable.

Changes in social capital, values and ASB seem to be linked. The wealth of modern societies—itself partly premised on the development of "thin" but widespread forms of trust—has given us the ability and confidence to free ourselves from many of the personal and sexual values associated with traditional religious and community structures. But in our new world of thin trust—where we routinely trust total strangers in many ways in our everyday interactions—our sense of others in general has also thinned. Our neighbours in a traditional community were real, identifiable people. Our neighbours in today's more abstract communities are far more numerous but also more shadowy, like a memory of a face that we cannot quite crystallise.

The effect is illustrated by what happens when people are given the wrong change in a shop. Survey data show that the majority of people would return the money if given the wrong change in a small corner shop. However, only a minority say that they would return the money if given the wrong change in a large supermarket or chain. The emotional constraints we feel in the face of the more anonymous—albeit generally reliable and trustworthy—structures of modern society are weaker.

Modern societies have generally solved the problem of how to get along with each other by codifying appropriate behaviour in both laws and informal social habits, such as shared understandings of politeness and civility. These shared understandings allow us to interact routinely with both friends and strangers with relative confidence. But these everyday ethical habits need renewal in every generation. It is unsurprising therefore to find the respect agenda is one that resonates down the ages. As Peter the Hermit is said to have written in the 12th century: "The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint."

Society continually reinvents itself, and we too have to adapt our habits of mutual respect. We have had to relearn written politeness for an age of emails, and highway codes in an age of congested roads.

At a fundamental level, such shared social norms have proved resilient despite the decline of the traditional associations and community that fashioned them—like a house of cards that remains standing even as we remove some of the underlying supports. Indeed, in some areas, such as concern for the environment, animals or developing countries, one can argue that the younger generations are showing greater ethical awareness than their parents.

But the increasing acceptance of supposedly victimless self-interested acts over the last 20 years, such as dropping litter or keeping something that you have found, suggests that a few cracks are opening in our ethical house of cards, and hence the recent concerns about "respect."

We need social norms as much as we ever did. In fact, in a society and economy of relative strangers, we need them more than ever. We need spaces where we can negotiate and debate what is and is not acceptable behaviour, reflecting on the consequences for others as well as ourselves. Media and politics play a critical, if imperfect, role in this process, as do the informal debates we have with our friends and family. We also need to have the confidence as citizens and as a society to enforce such social norms once we have agreed on them.

The task of moral renewal and reflection cannot end with the passing of traditional religious institutions. If we are not comfortable with our church leaders or politicians taking up the role, then we had better figure out other ways of doing it fast. This could be television chat shows or it could be more formal deliberation where we look to a random sample of our fellow citizens to help to decide what our shared conventions should be.

We might also be able to rely on others to help remind us of these norms and sometimes enforce them, such as teachers and neighbourhood wardens. But we all have to sign up to act on these norms, and occasionally to explain or enforce them. Behavioural norms are rarely held in place by laws and formal sanctions alone, but by the myriad minor interventions and cues that we get from parents, peers and fellow citizens. If we cannot or will not do this, then we either have to construct new social norms that are acceptable, or we had better get used to a world where the limited social trust that has powered our society and economy so effectively becomes increasingly threadbare. In this sense, public concerns about respect are like the hole in the ozone layer—an early warning about a problem that together we can fix, but with serious consequences if we don't.