Civic life and loneliness: counties and Sacramento ZIPs
Do places with more volunteering, more civic groups and more cross-class friendships report less loneliness? How does Sacramento's civic life compare, and which Sacramento ZIPs stand out?
Analysis by Andrew Ly (opens in a new tab) · Updated
Key finding
38.4% vs 33.3%
Loneliness in lowest vs highest volunteering county bins
Adults who feel lonely (age-adjusted %)
- About 110 counties per dot
- Trend line
binscatter_volunteering_loneliness.csv
Findings
The raw pattern is clear.
Counties in the lowest volunteering bin average 38.4% loneliness. Counties in the highest bin average 33.3%. The raw correlation is -0.39.
Most of it goes away after controls.
One standard deviation more volunteering goes with 0.15 points less loneliness once income, education, age and housing are held constant (95% CI 0.05 to 0.24). Counties differ by about 2.8 points in loneliness (one standard deviation), so this is small. Civic clubs from CBP show about the same size link (0.10 points). Facebook-measured civic groups and religious organizations show no reliable link after controls.
Cross-class friendship keeps the strongest link.
Economic connectedness, the share of friends that lower-income people have among higher-income people, goes with 0.56 fewer points of loneliness per standard deviation after controls (95% CI 0.38 to 0.75).
Tight-knit networks go with slightly more loneliness.
Counties where friends tend to know each other (higher clustering) report 0.30 points more loneliness per standard deviation after controls. Clustering is highest in small, rural places, and the controls may not capture all of that.
Sacramento looks weak nationally and average for a big county.
Its volunteering rate sits at the 32nd percentile of all counties and the 68th among the 44 counties of a million or more. Friend network clustering sits at the 3rd percentile nationally and the 55th among big counties. Religious organizations with paid staff per resident sit at the 7th percentile nationally.
Inside Sacramento County, loneliness follows volunteering closely.
Across ZIPs the correlation is -0.70. Among ZIPs with 2,000 or more residents, the loneliest are 95832, 95823, 95824, 95838 and 95828, all at 42.6% or higher. Volunteering also tracks income across these ZIPs (correlation 0.82 with economic connectedness), so this cannot be read as a civic effect.
Civic clubs are scarce locally.
ZIP Business Patterns lists 53 civic and social organizations with paid staff across Sacramento County, against 454 coffee shops and snack bars, 479 religious organizations and 1,088 full-service restaurants (2022).
Options
Option A. Message cross-class connection
The strongest link in the data is between mixed friendships and less loneliness. Pitch FourthSpace as a way to meet people outside your usual circle.
Option B. Seed events in the loneliest ZIPs
Start community nights in 95823, 95824, 95832, 95838 and 95828, where loneliness and volunteering are both weakest.
Option C. Partner with Sacramento's civic and social clubs
My pickThere are only 53 with paid staff in the county. Listing their events gives FourthSpace content on day one and gives the clubs new members.
Option D. Keep civic capital claims out of marketing
The associations shrink a lot after controls. Use this project as portfolio method work only.
Option E. Collect first-party data
Add two optional waitlist questions (how often do you feel lonely, did you volunteer this year) to build FourthSpace's own measure over time.
Default pick: C. It costs little and pays off whatever the causal story. A short list of clubs is easy to contact, and their events are exactly the regular, recurring gatherings a third place app needs. E is a low-cost add-on worth doing at the same time.
Method
01_build_and_model.pyjoins the Social Capital Atlas, PLACES, ACS and CBP at the county level. 2,893 counties match. 2,245 have every variable used in the models.- For each of seven civic measures, it runs two models of county loneliness. The first has state fixed effects only. The second adds median income, poverty, BA share, median age, renter share, share of adults living alone and log population. Each measure is standardized, so the coefficient reads as percentage points of loneliness per one standard deviation.
- It builds a binned scatter of loneliness by volunteering rate (20 bins of about 112 counties each).
- It ranks Sacramento County against all counties and against the 44 counties with a million or more people.
- It profiles Sacramento County's 49 ZIPs with Social Capital Atlas measures, PLACES loneliness and ZBP venue counts.
02_charts.pydraws the charts.
Tools
Python 3.13, pandas, NumPy, statsmodels (OLS with state fixed effects and state-clustered standard errors), matplotlib, Plotly. A shared loader (scripts/acs.py) builds ACS measures from the Census summary files, which need no API key.
Caveats
- These are comparisons between places. They say nothing about whether volunteering makes any one person less lonely.
- PLACES loneliness is a model-based estimate that leans on each area's age, sex, race and other makeup. Regressing it on demographics is partly circular, which is why county results are the main analysis. County estimates carry more local survey signal than ZIP estimates.
- The Social Capital Atlas measures Facebook users aged 25 to 44 in 2018-2019. It misses people off Facebook and predates the pandemic.
- CBP and ZBP count only organizations with paid employees. 53% of counties show zero civic and social organizations on this measure, so it undercounts volunteer-run groups badly.
- Clustering and support ratio describe network shape. They say nothing about friendship quality. Their signs here are hard to interpret.
Sources
Social Capital Atlas (Chetty et al., Nature 2022), county and ZIP files: volunteering rate, civic organizations, clustering, support ratio, economic connectedness
- Year
- Facebook data 2018-2019, released 2022
- Geography
- U.S. counties and ZIPs
CDC PLACES 2025 release, county and ZCTA loneliness and lack of support (model-based, BRFSS 2023)
- Year
- 2023
- Geography
- U.S. counties in module states; Sacramento ZCTAs
https://www.cdc.gov/places (opens in a new tab)
Public domainACS 2020-2024 5-year, table-based summary files (B01002, B01003, B09021, B15003, B19013, B25003, C17002)
- Year
- 2020-2024
- Geography
- U.S. counties and ZCTAs
County Business Patterns 2023 (NAICS 813410 civic and social organizations, 813110 religious organizations)
- Year
- 2023
- Geography
- U.S. counties
ZIP Code Business Patterns 2022, detail file
- Year
- 2022
- Geography
- Sacramento County ZIPs
The Phase 1 plan also named AmeriCorps' Civic Engagement and Volunteering supplement. It was not used. The Social Capital Atlas volunteering rate covers every county and ZIP, which the CEV state-level files cannot.
Interactive charts
After controls, most civic measures barely move county loneliness
Counties where more people volunteer report less loneliness
In Sacramento County, the ZIPs that volunteer least report the most loneliness
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