Henry Milner's response (2004) to our originalarticle (2003) is typically thorough and thoughtful, raising a number ofnew (and testable) hypotheses in the process. He mounts a robust defenceof the civic literacy argument and takes us to task on two grounds.First, he challenges our modeling strategy. Second, he mounts a defenceof aggregate level analysis of civic literacy, and points to thelimitations of individual–level models. In this brief reply, wetake up the challenges he sets.