Social Cohesion: General Connection to Others
Trust and social cohesion entail a sense of connection to others. One measure of this is the degree of charitable giving.
Percentage of Income Spent on Charitable
Giving, 2001-2004 Average
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Kansas City's rate of charitable giving, at 3 percent of income on average, is neither best nor worst among its peers. Rather, we are part of an extensive middle group, indicating a relatively average level of social connection.
Percentage Selecting "People can be trusted"
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The Metro Outlook Survey asked residents direct questions about trust, including one that asked whether they thought people could generally be trusted or whether one couldn’t be too careful.
Given a 1990s study that concluded residents of the Kansas City area were the most helpful in the U.S. (as cited in the CitiStates report) and the region’s general reputation for friendliness, it might be expected that metropolitan Kansas City would perform well on this measure. Instead, the proportion of survey respondents who said they trust people was significantly smaller in the Kansas City area than in the peer metros.
In addition, the Metro Outlook Survey asked people to rate both their own community and their metro as a whole on a wide range of issues, including poverty, job growth, housing affordability, crime, schools and the environment. (See Question 6.)
On most of these issues, the majority of people rated their own community’s performance higher than their metro area. The amount by which the community rating differs from the metro rating is a measure of how much residents perceive that their fortunes and concerns diverge from the rest of their region — with larger differences indicating a higher level of disconnection.
These differences between ratings of “my community” and “the metropolitan area” were summed across issue categories to arrive at the disconnection index below. On this measure, residents of Kansas City area communities feel most disassociated from the concerns of the metro as a whole, compared to its peers. Denver residents, on the other hand, perceive significantly smaller differences in the issues faced locally and regionally than any other peer.
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Across Social Communities/Social Isolation
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