The Diversity Paradox?

An Article in the Boston Globe highlights Robert Putnam’s research on diversity. The take home message is that diversity seems to lower social capital, yet increase creativity and possibly economic growth. This is labeled a diversity paradox.

However, it seems to me that there is no paradox at all, at least with respect to creativity. Diversity increases creativity because it lowers social capital.


A sketch of a model:

There are two levels of social goods: global and local.

Finding a cure for cancer is a global social good; building a children's center is a local social good.

People are compensated for the production of social goods through status.

Each ethnicity has a different preference ordering over local social goods.

In a mulit-ethnic community there are fewer people who prefer any one social good. Therefore, the status return is lower to producing local socials goods. The status return to global social goods is constant everywhere.

When communities become more diverse people substitute the production of local social goods for global social goods.

That is, it is more difficult to become famous and loved by all for being a civic leader so I tend to invest more time in becoming famous and loved by all through some national level accomplishment.

This might suggest that diversity itself is a public good but I am not sure. That is, it could be that homogenous communities are piggy-backing off of the global social goods produced by diverse communities.

Hat-tip Mankiw