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Author: Robert D. Putnam
Quotes of Author: Robert D. Putnam
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  1. Robert D. Putnam _ Our Kids: The American Dream

    In the quarter century between 1979 and 2005, average after-tax income {adjusted for inflation} grew by $900 a year for the bottom fifth of American households, by $8,700 a year for the middle fifth, and by $745,000 a year for the top 1 percent of households.
    book-quotesociety

  2. Robert D. Putnam _ Our Kids: The American Dream

    Without succumbing to political nightmares, we might ponder whether the bleak, socially estranged future facing poor kids in America today could have unanticipated political consequences tomorrow. So quite apart from the danger that the opportunity gap poses to American prosperity, it also undermines our democracy and perhaps even our political stability."
    book-quoteprescient

  3. Robert D. Putnam _ Bowling Alone: The Collapse

    Slavery was, in fact, a social system designed to destroy social capital among slaves and between slaves and freemen.
    book-quotesocial-capital

  4. Robert D. Putnam _ Our Kids: The American Dream

    Stressful conditions from outside school are much more likely to intrude into the classroom in high poverty schools. Every one of ten stressors is two to three times more common in high poverty schools-- Student hunger, unstable housing, lack of medical and dental care, caring for family members, immigration issues, community violence and safety issues.
    book-quotepovertyclassroom

  5. Robert D. Putnam _ Our Kids: The American Dream

    More plausible suspects in our mystery are the things that students collectively bring with them to school, ranging from{on the positive side of the ledger} academic encouragement at home and private funding for "extras" to {on the negative side} crime, drugs, and disorder. Whom you go to school with matters a lot.
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  6. Robert D. Putnam _ Making Democracy Work: Civic

    1. Institutions shape politics. The rules and standard operating procedures that make up institutions leave their imprint on political outcomes by structuring political behavior. Outcomes are not simply reducible to the billiard-ball interaction of individuals nor to the intersection of broad social forces. Institutions influence outcomes because they shape actors' identities, power, and strategies. 2. Institutions are shaped by history. Whatever other factors may affect their form, institutions have inertia and "robustness." They therefore embody historical trajectories and turning points. History matters because it is "path dependent": what comes first {even if it was in some sense "accidental"} conditions what comes later. Individuals may "choose" their institutions, but they do not choose them under circumstances of their own making, and their choices in turn influence the rules within which their successors choose.
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  7. Robert D. Putnam _ Bowling Alone: The Collapse

    {The Progressives} outlook was activist and optimistic, not fatalist and despondent. The distinctive characteristic of the Progressives was their conviction that social evils would not remedy themselves and that it was foolhardy to wait passively for time's cure. As Herbert Croly put it, they did not believe that the future would take care of itself. Neither should we.
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  8. Robert D. Putnam _ Our Kids: The American Dream

    Contemporary discussion of inequality in America often conflates two related but distinct issues: • Equality of income and wealth. The distribution of income and wealth among adults in today's America-framed by the Occupy movement as the 1 percent versus the 99 percent-has generated much partisan debate during the past several years. Historically, however, most Americans have not been greatly worried about that sort of inequality: we tend not to begrudge others their success or care how high the socioeconomic ladder is, assuming that everyone has an equal chance to climb it, given equal merit and energy. • Equality of opportunity and social mobility. The prospects for the next generation-that is, whether young people from different backgrounds are, in fact, getting onto the ladder at about the same place and, given equal merit and energy, are equally likely to scale it-pose an altogether more momentous problem in our national culture. Beginning with the "all men are created equal" premise of our national independence, Americans of all parties have historically been very concerned about this issue.
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  9. Robert D. Putnam _ Our Kids: The American Dream

    Many people have a stereotype of what it means to be poor. And it may be somebody they see on the street corner with a sign: "Will work for food." And what they don't think about is that person who's struggling every day. Could be the person who waited on us, took our bank deposit, works in retail, but who is barely above the poverty line.
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  10. Robert D. Putnam _ Our Kids: The American Dream

    Schools themselves aren't creating the opportunity gap: the gap is already large by the time children enter kindergarten and does not grow as children progress through school. The gaps in cognitive achievement by level of maternal education that we observe at age 18-powerful predictors of who goes to college and who does not - are mostly present at age 6when children enter school. Schooling plays only a minor role in alleviating or creating test score gaps.
    book-quoteopportunitygapsschooling

  11. Robert D. Putnam _ Bowling Alone: The Collapse

    If we think of politics as an industry, we might delight in its new "labour-saving efficiency", but if we think of politics as democratic deliberation, to leave people out is to miss the whole point of the exercise.
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  12. Robert D. Putnam _ Bowling Alone

    TV-based politics is to political action as watching ER is to saving someone in distress.
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