American associational membership collapsed across all major voluntary groups

Evidence

The sharp decline of bowling leagues was the clearest symptom. Where once these had involved regular evenings and tightly knit groups with their own rituals and rules, leagues were now shutting down. The drop-off was by no means limited to alley leaderboards. Churches, trade unions, shooting clubs, and Masonic lodges all saw membership contract dramatically in the 1980s and 1990s. When the remaining members left or died, these associations began to disband. They left behind a wasteland of sociability, visible in the dilapidated case del popolo in Italian city centers and abandoned workingmen’s clubs on the Liverpool docks. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 93

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Membership stagnates even though more Americans are positioned to join groups. — Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: America’s Declining…, 50; The association boom of 1960s-1990s was organizational growth without mass membership — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 151; Even booming professions saw their associations’ market share collapse in sequence — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 274