An Illustrated Guide to Generational Shifts in Psycho-Political Attitudes
For the first time last year, Millennials outnumbered Boomers among American adults. Already in 2014, they had outnumbered GenXers. This relentless generational change is the point of departure for grappling with the contemporary revolution in psycho-political attitudes and beliefs.
We have been paying attention to the class gradients in psycho-political attitudes. But, as we shall see, cohort or generational gradients cannot be ignored at all. In fact, generational change provides a neutral theory of the woke counterrevolution. This theory says that people's attitudes haven't changed per se. Rather, every year brings a fresh crop of 18-year-olds who are woker than the ones who came before them. And this process, ultimately driven by the machinery of the prestige schools, is an efficient explanation for the present upheaval in psycho-political attitudes.
In this empirical note, we document race, class and generational gradients in politically-relevant beliefs. Ultimately, the goal is to understand the political consequences of this generational shift in psycho-political attitudes. All data is from the 2018 module of the General Social Survey. So the data is very recent, having been collected two years into the Trump presidency. All the response variables we consider are ordinal. We code these as taking integer values. We shall be looking at conditional means to get a handle on race, class and generational gradients in the responses.
We begin with belief in God, where the response ranges from 'don't believe' (0) to 'know that God exists' (5). Millennials are dramatically less god-fearing than Boomers or GenXers.
We also note that there is a significant class gradient in faith. The working class is more god-fearing than the middle class. And the pattern extends to the minor classes at the extremes.
Note that we are using self-identified class. In class identification too, we find a generational shift. Millennials and GenXers are much less likely than Boomers to think of themselves as middle class. Whereas 51 percent of Boomers think of themselves as middle class and only 35 percent as working class, the odds are reversed for the younger generations. This speaks directly to the vanishing of the American Dream. Recall also that 44 percent identify as working class and middle class each, while 9 percent identify as lower class and 3.6 percent as upper class. These proportions have been virtually constant since GSS started asking respondents to self-identify their class in 1972.
We formally compute race, class and generational gradients using OLS. We report heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors since we are looking at cross-sectional variation. We find that, relative to white middle-class Boomers, African-Americans and the lower classes are more god-fearing and Millennials are considerably less god-fearing.
GSS asked respondents how often they feel disrespected. The younger generations report feeling disrespect considerably more often than Boomers.
There is also a significant class gradient in perceived slight. People who self-identify as working class or lower class report feeling disrespected more often than people who identify as middle class or upper class.
As before, we regress our ordinal variable on race, class and generational dummies. Surprisingly, we find that, relative to white middle-class Boomers, Black respondents do not report higher frequencies of feeling disrespected once we control for class and generation. By contrast, the working class, and especially the lower class, report feeling more disrespected. This pattern goes to the heart of elite-mass relations. The younger generations also report higher rates, suggesting major generational shifts in the propensity to take slight.
The frequency with which people report being provided poor service also varies strongly by generation. Millennials report receiving shoddy service more often than GenXers, who in turn report receiving shoddy service more often than Boomers.
The class gradient is also robust. People who identify as working class report being poorly served more often than the middle class.
Once we control for race and generations, the gradient for the working class vanishes. Instead, we find that African-Americans, people who identify as lower class, and the younger generations, all report receiving shoddy service more often than white middle-class Boomers.
Yet another variable that encodes perceived slight the frequency of being treated as "not smart." Millennials report much higher frequencies than GenXers, who in turn report higher frequencies than Boomers.
The class gradient is also significant. The lower classes report being treated as stupid more often than the upper classes.
African-Americans too, report being treated as stupid more often than white middle-class Boomers. GenXers, and especially Millennials, perceive being treated as stupid much more often than Boomers.
Respondents were also asked how often they feel threatened. Threat perception is dramatically conditioned by generation. Millennials report much higher frequencies of feeling threatened than GenXers, and the latter report higher frequencies than Boomers.
By contrast, the class gradient here is weak. Only the lower class reports a higher frequency of being threatened — probably because it is.
These patterns are reflected in the formal estimates. Relative to white middle-class Boomers, Millennials and GenXers report higher frequencies, as do people who identify as lower class. The explanation for the two is probably different. The lower class may be physically more at risk, whereas the younger generations are quicker to say they feel threatened. Recall the cancellation of Bennet, the Op-Ed page editor at the New York Times. The mob led by Hannah Jones claimed that Senator Cotton's Op-Ed threatened the safety of Black reporters at the newspaper. That story has been repeated often enough. Perhaps what explains it is this generational shift in threat perceptions.
Millennials are dramatically more supportive of affirmative action than the older generations.
But the class gradient in support for racial preference is weak.
Race, however, is extremely salient. Meanwhile, the generational gradient vanishes once we control for class and race. This is astonishing considering the general perception that the white working class is less supportive of affirmative action than the white middle class. The only gradient that does not vanish is of the Black dummy.
Unlike affirmative action, both class and generational differences are large and significant for what political scientists call "symbolic racism." The question posed to respondents is as follows.
Irish, Italians, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without special favors.
Responses to this question are supposed to contain information on racial resentment. But what they actually mine is the working class script of the 'disciplined self' identified by Michele Lamont. So we should expect a class gradient for this response.
We document a massive and recent generational shift in attitudes towards race-relations. Millennials are dramatically more opposed to the idea embodied in the "symbolic racism" statement than the older generations. This generational shift in attitudes towards race-relations is the principal driver of what has been called the Great Awokening by Zach Goldberg and others.
The class gradient on the symbolic racism question is robust as expected.
Formally, we find that, relative to white middle-class Boomers, African-Americans and Millennials fall on one side of this question and the lower classes fall on the other. This is the key to the class-partisan realignment and the present confrontation over race-relations.
What is the political valence of these patterns? Note first that, of all the response variables considered above, only the first, belief in God (r=0.15, P < 0.001), and the last two questions on race-relations, are associated with partisan identity. Support for affirmative action predicts support for Democrats (r=-0.33, P < 0.001), while agreement with the gotcha "symbolic racism" statement predicts support for Republicans (r=0.34, P < 0.001). But even if they don't contain predictive information, all the differences in psycho-political attitudes we have looked at condition the political affinities in important ways.
What emerges from this analysis is a portrait of generational change. We have documented that Millennials are less god-fearing, quicker to take offense, and much more liberal on race relations than Boomers. GenXers, by contrast, are no less god-fearing and no more liberal on race-relations than Boomers. In terms of propensity to take offense, they are midway between Millennials and Boomers. The real confrontation is thus between Millennials and their Boomer parents. Now that 40 percent of people in the late 20s have moved back in with their parents, we should picture millions of heated debates and the generations getting cross with each other as they watch antiracists battle police officers on American streets.