Kids These Days

Ann Hulbert profiles the views of persons given the unfortunate label "Generation Next," those of us between the ages of 18-25. She says that "what makes Gen Nexters sui generis — and perhaps more mysterious than their elders appreciate — are their views on two divisive social topics, abortion and gay marriage." In particular, "Young Americans, it turns out, are unexpectedly conservative on abortion but notably liberal on gay marriage."

Given that 18- to 25-year-olds are the least Republican generation (35 percent) and less religious than their elders (with 20 percent of them professing no religion or atheism or agnosticism), it is curious that on abortion they are slightly to the right of the general public. Roughly a third of Gen Nexters endorse making abortion generally available, half support limits and 15 percent favor an outright ban. By contrast, 35 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds support readily available abortions. On gay marriage, there was not much of a generation gap in the 1980s, but now Gen Nexters stand out as more favorably disposed than the rest of the country. Almost half of them approve, compared with under a third of those over 25.

There seems to be more bark than bite on that abortion result. "Roughly a third" and "35 percent" are very similar numbers when you're talking about statistical surveys with margins of error. Hulbert then starts offering a lot of speculative thinking about what accounts for "Generation Next" opinion on this and that. I note that, like many authors, Hulbert seems to both assume that the Generation Next cohort is demographically identical to the Baby Boom cohort except for age. Relatedly, the background assumption of her speculation seems to be that differences in opinion are accounted for by the fact that white middle class young people have different views about things than do white middle class older people.

In fact, as you can read here (PDF) the median age of non-hispanic white Americans is 40.3, of African-Americans is 30.9, of Asian Americans is 34.5 and of Hispanics is 27.2 -- these are big differences. Thus, when you compare 18-25 year-olds to 50-64 year-olds you're comparing a youth cohort that's substantially less white than your middle-aged cohort which, all on its own, can make a big difference without anyone necessarily "disagreeing with their parents" about anything. Some parents have more children than others. This also seems to indicate that occassionally voiced fears (or hopes) that highly religious conservative parents will wind up outbreeding liberals is unwarranted.