| dc.description.abstract | Putnam (2007) claims that in the short run ethnic diversity tends to reduce solidarity and social capital: in ethnically diverse neighborhoods, residents of all ethnicities tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even in one’s own ethnic group) is lower, altruism and community cooperation is more rare, friends fewer. This study replicates Putnam’s analysis for a West-European country. Furthermore, by including the ethnicity of the respondent’s neighbors, a sub-neighborhood level measure of ethnic diversity is added to the analyses. With data from the Netherlands (N=5,757), using multi-level regression, we confirm Putnam’s claim and find that the neighborhoods’ ethnic diversity as well as having neighbors of a different ethnicity, reduces trust in the neighborhood and lowers the quality of contact with the neighbors. However, we do not find these negative effects of neighborhoods’ or neighbors ethnic diversity on inter-ethnic trust. This holds for both for immigrants and native residents. A substantial part of the effect of neighborhoods’ ethnic diversity on trust can be explained by the higher propensity of having neighbors of a different ethnicity. We conclude that ethnic diversity can have a negative effect on trust in the neighborhood. | en |