•  
  •  
 

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Numerous indices measuring social capital and community challenges at the local level exist, but none attempt to offer a measure of community health as an independent variable in comparison to community challenges as a dependent variable. Therefore, we propose the Covenantal-Noncentralization Index (CNI) in an effort to provide a more nuanced understanding of social capital at the local level as well as to differentiate between an independent variable index consisting of family stability, religious adherence, non-profit activity, and charitable giving and dependent variables representing various community challenges: violent crime, childhood poverty, STD rate, high school diploma completion, GDP, and unemployment. Data for all of the above-mentioned variables were collected for each county in the United States. Using simple correlation for step 1, we found that four of our variables of interest are significantly correlated with our index: violent crime, childhood poverty, STD rate, and high school diploma. We then used Pearson’s correlation to compare the relationship between the CNI and an index of the above-mentioned community challenges. The R2 for this correlation was 0.192, indicating that 19% of the variance in the community challenges index can be explained by the CNI index. We discuss opportunities for further enhancing the CNI, including a score for Dillon’s Rule versus Home Rule.

Download

Included in

Law Commons

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.