Having just warned you about issues with polling, here's a snippet from the Harvard Youth Poll about which issues are most important to young people. The pollster has a pretty good way of measuring this that involves asking people to choose among pairs of topics. The pairs are rotated randomly and then added up. Here's how it came out:
Note that this is not a poll of "liberal young people" or "college-educated young people." It's everyone.
Among young people, it turns out they could hardly care less about climate change, Gaza, or student debt. Even abortion only makes the middle of the pack. They are most concerned about bog ordinary things like inflation, health care, and housing.
Interpret this as you will.
The world is definitely getting better.
When I was 18, my main concern was not dying in Vietnam.
In retrospect, my concern should have been how and why my government attacked a country which had done nothing to us. But I was much more ignorant then.
"In retrospect..."
Thank you for so precisely cutting to the heart of the matter.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable to be concerned with “not dying before I have a chance to live a fruitful life” no matter what the cause of death is. It was really horrible to have the draft hanging over (male, poorer, less white) 18 year olds back then, especially for a country halfway around the world that ultimately didn’t matter at all to America’s future prosperity. (We seem to have done just fine in the half century since we lost that war.) And if 18 year olds were dying in high numbers of Covid or a new AIDS virus or high school/college terrorists or whatever today, I would fully expect 18 year olds to be more concerned with “finding a vaccine or cure” than with “inflation,” “housing,” or anything else on that list (except perhaps “healthcare” which might encompass “finding a vaccine or cure” in some minds even though I think it’s supposed to mean “health insurance” here).
I forget what the hierarchy of needs fancy name is. But “not dying in the near future” and “not dying from something avoidable” are pretty high up on everyone’s priorities. Surveys in America assume those are already met. It’s only until you’re secure that neither of those will happen that you have the mental space to worry about other stuff.
Kids these days, I swear. Now they're acting normal!
Healthcare?????
I didn't care about health care till I was married and had kids. In high school I played football and all injuries were covered by the school. In college my one trip to hospital was covered by the school. Post college my work insurance covered most of the costs of my children's birth. The first kid required a co-pay of $50
Health care has changed a lot. I work for a large company and our childbo caused us to hit our $3600 two years in a row, plus a couple grand that wasn’t covered. And that was after what I’d estimate at 100 hours of dealing with insurance issues.
Yes, apply 60 years of inflation.
A google said 10. which was my guess.
The quality of care is better at an even higher number.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume healthcare wasn’t a bankruptable expense back in your 20s. It is today. One single visit to the ER could indenture an 18 year old until they are 68 or longer.
When I was young I thought I was pretty much invincible and didn’t even think about health care expenses. In those days (60’s and early 70’s) when there were health related advertisements on TV it was for headaches or cold remedies. Young celebrities died of drug overdoses. Nowadays TV is filled with drug advertisements for diseases I never heard of when I was young. And even young celebrities are famously saying they have some rare autoimmune condition. When I was young having an allergy meant having the sniffles during the spring. Nowadays it seems half the kids in school have some sort of food allergy.
So I suppose that feeling of invincibility isn’t as common now.
I’m surprised that inflation is at the top of the list. It seems like a sort of adult topic. When I was less than 30 I knew about inflation as a topic but didn’t remember well enough year to year to think I felt it.
Inflation is generally only a problem if your income is lagging behind prices, which isn't necessarily what's happening. Maybe what's meant here is gasoline prices.
Young people are the workers most likely to not have incomes keeping up with inflation. Young people have little to no experience in their jobs to rely on for asking for raises, or getting promotions that come with raises. Their overall incomes tend to be low, similar to seniors living on Social Security, except SS is automatically adjusted for inflation and seniors have a lifetime of wealth (their homes are generally paid off or have equity built up) to draw more money from if need be. Young people tend to rent, and rents are squeezing everything else they need to buy to live. Most people experience a bell curve when it comes to income over their lifetimes: they earn the most around age 40-50 and they earn dramatically less in their younger and older years for different reasons as mentioned above, but both of those groups are the ones I would expect to suffer the most from inflation. We’ve only partially protected those over 65 though.
So yeah: I think inflation is probably well known to young people (even if they don’t know that word specifically, they’ll agree with “living costs are too high or rising too fast”).
“We’ve only partially protected those over 65 though.”
Supposed to be, but I got cutoff mid edit:
We’ve only partially protected those over 65 though, through the SS automatic adjustments. We’ve done a lot less to protect young people (and the unlucky folks age 55-64 who happen to lose their jobs and can’t get another one) from inflation. Some states are finally raising the minimum wage to lift them up, but for the most part Americans think people in ages 18-29 (and up through roughly 65) should just work more if they need more money, taking on extra hours or jobs to get enough to pay rent and living expenses.
It's also been the running headline for the past couple years. Suspect such headlines unduly influence current media consumers and likely the young more so.
"they could hardly care less about climate change, Gaza, or student debt"
This is not descriptive. These are not among the highest, but they are not a long way below them. And what is the statistical error for this apparently complexly-derived ranking?
It would be very interesting to break this down further by age and educational status. Those out of school, which is presumably the majority (past either high school or college) are just starting to face the real economic challenges of life, which includes inflation, healthcare and housing, although it might also include student debt (how many actually have such debt?). Protesting about Gaza (or anything) is mostly something for college students.
“Interpret this as you will.”
Well, your post immediately before this one pretty much suggested we shouldn’t put much faith in polls at all. And it was even about polling young people!
Properly read:
Democracy? Pfffft! I care more about inflation, healthcare, housing and guns.
18 to 29 is not the best definition of young people. People in their late teens and early 20s are typically doing a lot of different things than people in their late 20s. Probably be better to see say folks from 18-24 or something. Although I know, you have to work with the data presented.
Affordable and safe housing is the #1 concern for the young people I know, including my own children.
When a room in a shared apartment costs half your income, there's no way to save and you are always one disaster away from a complete wipe-out.
"Could hardly care less about..."
* Abortion 50% -- that gets almost all the females. "care less"??
* Democracy 53% -- in an election, that would be considered a landslide
* Climate change 43% -- well, it could be worse. But 43% is hardly "not caring"
And college tuition debt? What percentage of the 20-30s even have it? Probably less than the number who are "concerned".
I wouldn't sweat too hard about this survey of a few people as a gage of "young people" in general.
Bob Somerby, if you are reading here, please be aware that some trolls at your blog are posting false articles and attributing them to Taegan Goddard at Political Wire. Goddard has been informed that they are doing this. YOU might want to moderate your blog comments and remove the junk, unless you condone what is happening.
Guns, democracy, housing, healthcare. Thats all dem stuff. Biden has recently begun to talk more about housing actually.
Also considering how close the 50s are clustered it's highly dishonest to be dismissve of abortion in the manner you were.
I'll throw it on the pile of evidence that humanity is already extinct, it just takes a while for all of us to die. Meanwhile, we stumble on for a while as a zombie species.
Young people are the main victims of climate change. If they don't care about it, nothing will be done until it is far too late.
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