Berkeley, CA -- September 24, 2002 -- The generation gap between
youths and older adults might not be what you’d expect, and on some
political issues involving religion and abortion, young people may be the
most conservative of all, according to a new survey by University of
California, Berkeley, political scientists.
The report, released today
(Tuesday, Sept. 24) by the campus’s Survey Research Center as part of the
center’s Public Agendas and Citizen Engagement Survey (PACES), is based
on interviews nationwide with Americans ages 15 to 92. It provides a
comprehensive assessment of the generation gap in American political
opinions.
UC Berkeley political science
professors Merrill Shanks and Henry Brady were the lead researchers,
along with Indiana University professor Edward Carmines. Douglas Strand
of the Survey Research Center was the study’s project director. Topics
and results include:
-
School prayer. Fifty-nine
percent of adults ages 27 to 59 want public schools to allow prayer at
official school activities, such as commencements. Among teenagers, 69
percent support school prayer.
-
Federal aid to
faith-based charities. Forty percent of adults ages 27 to 59
support such funding. But support reaches 59 percent among the
college-aged and 67 percent among younger teens.
-
Religious
conservatives. Young Americans show somewhat more warmth
towards religious conservatives than older adults. Individuals ranked
their feelings for these groups on a scale from zero for “cold” to
50-100 for varying degrees of “warmth.” Although no age group showed
much warmth to Christian fundamentalists, 33 percent of youths ages 15
to 26 gave them a rating over 50; 26 percent of Americans over age 26
gave a similar score.
-
Abortion.
Government restrictions on abortion are supported by 34 percent of
adults over 26, while about 44 percent of youths ages 15 to 22 support
such restrictions.
“We were surprised by the
greater support among young Americans for some aspects of the
conservative cultural agenda,” said Shanks. “Young Americans show more
conservatism on religious politics and abortion even though youths, as a
group, appear to be less likely than their elders to attend religious
services regularly or consider religion a guide in their daily life.
“If the youth of today
maintain these positions on religious politics and abortion as the years
go by, then the American public as a whole could become more conservative
on these issues.”
In the case of social security
and education, if there is a generation gap in opinions, it is the
elderly who stand out, not the youth. Youth are just as supportive as
their parents and grandparents when it comes to government spending on
health care for seniors. However, older Americans don’t show a
corresponding supportiveness for the education programs that benefit
youth. While 70 percent of young and middle-aged Americans support more
spending on elementary and secondary education, only 52 percent of those
over 60 favor increased school funding.
Some traditional political
differences between young and older Americans continue to prevail. Youths
are more inclined to want the federal government to do more to protect
women and racial minorities from job discrimination. They also are more
likely to consider job discrimination against gays and lesbians to be a
serious problem. And they want more federal programs to assist the poor
and protect the environment.
Differences between the young
and old are most dramatic when it comes to sex and violence on
television. Among Americans ages 27-59, 67 percent think “the amount of
sexual content on television” is a serious problem, while just 47 percent
of teens and the college-aged feel that way.
And while an overwhelming
majority of the adults ages 27 to 59--74 percent--thinks TV violence is a
serious problem, the majority of teens and young adults--55
percent--disagree.
On many other issues, however,
there was no generation gap. The study found no dramatic differences
between younger and older Americans on such issues as military defense,
gun control, tax policy, criminal punishment, and government support for
health care in general.
“The next step for us and
other scholars is to solve the puzzles in our overall picture of the
generation gaps in political opinions,” said Strand. “We need to explore
why youths seem to be more conservative than their elders when it comes
to religious politics and abortion politics, but not other issues.”
Strand speculated that
messages criticizing abortion and supporting school prayer and government
aid to religious charities may have been more prominent in the media
while the youngest generation was developing political views. He noted
that older generations developed their basic positions on these issues
before religious conservatives began mobilizing politically in the late
1970s.
The study is based on
telephone interviews completed during the latter half of 2001, and most
occurred between late April and September 10. About 1,250 people were
interviewed, a standard sample for academic survey research.
The executive summary of the
report, containing additional details about it, is available on the Web
at