Joel Kotkin

Urgent Need to Bridge Today's Generation Gap

This Post Originally Appeared in the National Journal

 

 

In 1964, Jack Weinberger, a leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement that kicked off a decade of student protests, famously proclaimed that his age cohort should “never trust anyone over 30.” A recent survey by communications research and consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates suggests that a gap just as deep exists today between younger and older generations. While the gap may not be as visible as in the 1960s, it still has the potential to be every bit as divisive.

Magid asked a national sample of 3,150 Americans, ages 16 to 66, if they were “least likely to get along with someone of the opposite sex, a different racial background, or a different generation (much older or younger).”

Overall, 53 percent say that they are least likely to get along with someone of a different generation. By contrast, only about a third believed that they would have the most difficulty interacting with someone of a different race, and one in five mentioned a person of the opposite sex as least likely to get along with.

Given their high degree of racial tolerance and wholesale rejection of traditional gender roles, it isn’t surprising that the youngest generation in Magid’s sample, millennials (those in their teens or twenties), were more likely than older persons to cite generational disagreements and less likely to expect disagreements across racial or gender lines. This was especially true of the teenagers in the survey.

While Magid’s question focused on interpersonal relationships, there is already evidence that the generational divisions it uncovered will be of increasingly broad societal importance in the years ahead.

 

In the 2008 presidential election, for example, millennials supported Barack Obama over John McCain by greater than 2-to-1 (66 percent to 32 percent), while the next two older cohorts (Generation X and boomers) divided their votes about evenly between the two candidates; a majority of senior citizens supported McCain.

According to the latest polls, millennials support Obama by about the same 2-to-1 margin as in 2008, while Gen-X’ers and boomers are evenly split. Seniors prefer the Republican candidate by an even greater margin than they did four years ago.

Indeed, Pew’s latest American Values Survey attributes much of the increasing polarization of U.S. politics to the “strong generational characteristics of the millennial generation compared with” older generations. This makes it likely that the same large generational split will occur again this November.

But the political differences are only one example of a large-scale division in attitudes and behavior between millennials and their elders. From the country’s houses of worship to its major-league ballparks and from its homes to its workplaces, millennials have a very different outlook on society than older Americans.

 

So far this generational division has not had the acrimony of the generation gap from the 1960s. In large part that’s because millennials, unlike the boomers of 50 years ago, are not rebellious by nature. If anything, millennials are unfailingly polite. Their parents, whom they actually like, have taught them to seek win-win solutions to controversial issues.

However, as demographer Joel Kotkin indicates, many current public policies work to the benefit of older generations at the expense of younger ones. Kotkin points out that U.S. politicians of both the right and left promote “governmental policies [that] continue to favor boomers and seniors over the young.”

In Great Britain, young people have formed an organization, the Intergenerational Foundation, to publicize and begin to redress their grievances. The IF website features postings such as “Intergenerational Practice vs. Intergenerational Justice” and “Sharing the cake—an Intergenerational Dilemma” that clearly express the organization’s concerns.

Perhaps American millennials will not form groups that are so explicitly focused on their own cohort or take to the streets as boomers did five decades ago. But that does not mean that they will do nothing.

Unlike many European countries with small youth populations, millennials have the numbers to produce more equitable public policies. At 95 million, millennials are the largest American generation ever.

By 2020 they will comprise more than one in three eligible voters. Sooner or later, those numbers, and the unity of belief that the millennial generation has so far brought to politics, will allow the generation to reshape the United States, first as voters and then as the nation’s leaders.  

The way in which boomers and seniors react to the growing presence of millennials, and the younger generation’s distinctive beliefs, will determine how difficult the transition from the old to the new America will be.  

 

 

Full disclosure: Michael D. Hais retired in 2006 as vice president of entertainment research from Frank N. Magid Associates after a 22-year career with Magid and continues to do occasional work for the firm.

 

 

Invite: Mon. June 20th Event -- What the 2010 Census Means for the 2012 Elections

America is going through profound demographic change.   The latest census results affirm what we at NDN have been saying for years: the Hispanic population is booming, the population is moving to the South and to the West,  and the Millennial Generation is on the rise.   But what does this new data tell us about how both parties will need to retool going into the 2012 elections?   What do these demographic shifts mean for American politics?

Join us on Monday, June 20th at 5:30pm ET for a panel discussion on what the 2010 Census means for the 2012 Election.  Morley Winograd, NDN Fellow and co-author of Millennial Makeover, one of New York Times Ten Favorite Books of 2008, and the forthcoming Millenium Momentum, will join us to discuss the growth of the Millennial Generation and how this fast-growing portion of the electorate can be engaged.  Joel Kotkin, an internationally-recognized authority on global, economic, political and social trends, and the crtically acclaimed author of The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, will offer thoughts on migration within America, how suburbs and city-centers will change to accommodate population growth, and what those changes mean for state and national politics.  Carlos Odio, the former Deputy Latino Vote Director for Obama for America and Deputy Associate Director of the White House Office of Political Affairs, and now the Director of Special Projects at New Organizing Institute, will offer reflections on the changing Latino electorate and how and where their participation will make an impact in 2012.

Following the panel, there will be a brief reception with light refreshments.  Be sure to RSVP here.   

For background, be sure to check out the past work of NDN's 21st Century America Project.

Joel Kotkin's The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050

As part my introduction to the NDN world, and in anticipation of our Friday event, Simon tasked me with reading Joel Kotkin's The Next Hundred Million:  America in 2050.  You can imagine my excitement.  I mean, what's sexier than demography?  And yet Kotkin has a knack for making complex and data-heavy concepts accessible and - don't mock me - exciting. 

Kotkin begins with an introduction to America's current and forthcoming demographic shifts (in diversity of age, ethnicity, race and country of origin) and then delves into an unapologetically optimistic analysis of how those shifts -particularly America's youthfulness - will transform our shared future and allow America to maintain its place as a world leader.  On a local level, Kotkin explores migration within America, and examines how suburbs and city-centers will change to accommodate such growth, as well as the green technology critical to sustaining a population that needs to learn to do more with less.  That last bit might sound daunting, but here's Kotkin's main point, offered like a reassuring parent or partner:  we'll do what we need to do, as we've always done, and we'll be great.  We should be aware of the possible pitfalls, but we shouldn't worry.  In fact, we should step back and marvel at America's unlimited potential. 

Of particular note is how Kotkin's views defy the panic and paranoia of those who suggest that America grows at its own peril.  Kotkin views our growth and corresponding diversity as an asset that will "drive our economic resilience." In this way, The Next Hundred Million is the ultimate antidote to the far Right's assertion that Latinos and immigrants are changing America for the worse. 

If Kotkin's book is as spot-on as it seems, then I have seen a snapshot of the future, and I gotta say:  it looks pretty good.

Three Interesting NDN Events This Week - Angelides, Clean Tech, America in 2050

Got an action packed line up this week for those either able to make it to lunch in our offices, or watch on-line.  Tomorrow we start with the Chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Phil Angelides, who will be talking about the necessity of understanding where we have been to help inform the decisions about how to best move forward.

Next up on Thursday is the unveiling of a major new paper by our Green Project Director, Michael Moynihan, proposing a new way to help unlock the transformative power of the clean tech and renewable energy revolution.  Michael has been working on this paper for close to a year now, and if these are areas of interest, you won't want to miss it. 

Finally, on Friday, an old friend, Joel Kotkin, returns to NDN with one of the first public events discussing his compelling new book, The Next 100 Million: America in 2050

So, a full week.  To RSVP or to get more information click here.   And look forward to seeing you at one of these wonderful events.

Will the Democrats Look Forward or Backward in 2008…and Beyond?

Makeovers or realignments occur about every four decades in American politics, resulting in forty years of partisan advantage for the party that catches the next wave of generational and technological change. For the other party, it means spending forty years in the minority. Whether a party prospers or loses ground at the time of a realignment depends, in large part, on whether it is willing to embrace a new coalition of voters that is aligned with the larger changes taking place in society or whether it remains locked in the divisions and debates of the past.

In 1896, the Democrats and William Jennings Bryan looked back to an agrarian America and to Jefferson's and Jackson's "yeoman farmer", leaving it to Republicans William McKinley and Mark Hanna, the Carl Rove of his era, to appeal to an emerging urban America. The result was GOP dominance of U.S. politics for the next forty years.

The Democrats got it right in 1932. That year, spurred by the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt built a coalition based on the economic egalitarianism of the GI Generation, many of whom were blue-collar workers and the children and grandchildren of the last great wave of European immigrants to the United States.

But as late as 1968, many Democrats still wanted to rely on the New Deal coalition even as a young idealist generation, Baby Boomers, attempted to get the party to focus on a different set of concerns including civil rights, women's rights, and opposition to the Vietnam war. The resulting divisions presented an opportunity that the Republicans have exploited ever since.

Now, forty years later, American politics is undergoing another period of political and generational change just as it did in 1896, 1932, and 1968. If the Democratic Party has the courage to embrace a new generation of young voters and the group-oriented values it favors, it can once again recapture the political advantage for the next four decades.

Unfortunately, most of the advice the party is getting on what constitutes a winning coalition in 2008, is being provided by pundits and candidates who seem locked in the politics and divisions of the past. Some tell the party to focus on the "white working class," or "hardworking white people." On the other hand, a recent Wall Street Journal article suggested that the focus should be on "senior citizens," virtually all of whom vote and who, together, comprise about 20-percent of the electorate. But these approaches to coalition building neither recognize the major demographic changes continuing to take place in America nor the factors that lead to political makeovers or realignments.

Throughout history, realignments have been produced by the political coming-of-age of a large, dynamic generation and its use of a new communication technology that mobilizes the opinions and votes of that generation. Today's realignment stems from the emergence of the Millennial Generation (Americans born 1982-2003) and its use of Internet based social networking technologies.

The Millennial Generation is the largest in American history. There are over 90 million Millennials, about four in ten of whom are of voting age, making them just as powerful a force in the 2008 election as the much more frequently touted senior citizen cohort.

The Millennial Generation is also the most diverse in our history. Four in ten are non-white and about 20-percent are the children of at least one immigrant parent. Reflecting their gender-neutral behavior, a majority of college undergraduates are women, for the first time in U.S. history. Solid majorities of Millennials are tolerant on social and racial issues, favorable to governmental intervention and egalitarian policies in the economy, and an activist, but multilateral, approach in foreign affairs. With few exceptions, Millennials have overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama in this year's presidential primaries and caucuses.

At the same time, changes in America's economy and the composition of its population serve to continue the half-century long trend, noted recently by Alan Abramowitz in the Rasmussen Report, of the diminishing contribution of "white working class voters" to the American workforce overall and to the Democratic electorate specifically:

 

"In the 1950s, manual workers made up 47 percent of the white electorate in the United States while sales and clerical workers made up 21 percent and professional and managerial workers made up 32 percent. By the first decade of the 21st century, however, manual workers made up only 24 percent of the white electorate, while sales and clerical workers made up 33 percent and professional and managerial workers made up 43 percent. Since the 1960s, however, Democratic identification among both white manual workers and white sales and clerical workers has declined sharply while Democratic identification among white professional and managerial workers has risen. Today, white professional and managerial workers are actually more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than either white manual workers or white clerical and sales workers."

 

As Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel wrote recently, the Democratic Party is rapidly becoming a party of "gentry liberals", minorities and youth with little resemblance to the working class-based party coalition assembled by FDR almost eighty years ago.

This shift in America's economic dynamics and demographics, coupled with the generational and technological changes the country is experiencing, produces an historic opportunity for the Democratic Party in 2008. In a March 2008 Pew Survey, Millennials identified as Democrats over Republicans by a greater than 2:1 margin. Millennials are the first generation in more than forty years in which a larger number say they are liberal rather than conservative. In contrast to older generations that are sharply divided by sex and race in their ideology and party identification Millennials are united in their political leanings, a fact that serves to enhance the potential decisiveness of this powerful new generation.

All of this gives the Democrats a clear leg-up in the Millennial makeover that's under way. Whether the Democratic Party takes advantage of this historical opportunity largely depends on the choices it makes in building its electoral coalition. Will it look backward, as it did to its detriment in 1896, or forward, as it did in 1932, to its benefit? The consequences of that choice will shape the fate of the party and the nation, not just in 2008, but also for the coming four decades.

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