Community decline came from failing recruitment of new members, not member dropout.

Evidence

It wasn’t so much that old members dropped out—at least not any more rapidly than age and the accidents of life had always meant. But community organizations were no longer continuously revitalized, as they had been in the past, by freshets of new members. Organizational leaders were flummoxed. For years they assumed that their problem must have local roots or at least that it was peculiar to their organization, so they commissioned dozens of studies to recommend reforms. The slowdown was puzzling because for as long as anyone could remember, membership rolls and activity lists had lengthened steadily. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 23

Categorization

• XREF: Identifies the key causal mechanism (diminished inflow of new members) that later chapters and the movie/TV-generation analyses build on. — connects to: Membership stagnates even though more Americans are positioned to join groups. — Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: America’s Declining…, 50

Broader Connections

• Membership stagnates even though more Americans are positioned to join groups. #corroborates (0.85) — Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone, 50