This book offers an important, wide-ranging analysis that compares political attitudes and behaviors of Millennials to older Americans while also providing an essential analysis of the heterogeneity that exists among Millennials. It should be referenced by anyone writing in political science about this generation. After reading it, I am even more convinced than I was before that referring to “Millennials” as a group is often inadequate. Stella Rouse and Ashley Ross routinely show that race and ideology often complicate whether and how being a Millennial affects public opinion.
The authors begin by describing Millennials and the social, economic, and political contexts in which they came of age. They review literature on political generations and develop what they call the “Millennial persona.” Although they also call it an identity, it is not an identity as the concept is commonly understood by political psychologists. The authors do not employ measures of shared identification, sense of commonality, or connection to the group as a group. In popular culture, Millennials are constantly being told that they are Millennials. According to social identity theory (Henri Tajfel, “Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations,” Annual Review of Psychology 33, 1982), that should have an impact. At a minimum, it might lead Millennials to think of themselves as Millennials. Do they? We do not know because no one has asked them. Scholars doing original survey research always wish they could go back in time and change their instrument; I wish Rouse and Ross could do that and add questions about Millennial identification. What the authors instead propose is that Millennials generally possess a shared outlook that stems from a unique set of common experiences. Those experiences sometimes make this group distinctive in its political outlook when compared to older generations, even if Millennials themselves might not feel a sense of common cause with one another.
So what is this persona? And is the term Millennial, or any generational label, useful? Critics decry such labels as marketing ploys or unscientific gimmicks. Yet we know that the politically formative years can have a lasting impact on one’s political outlook (Duane F. Alwin and Jon A. Krosnick, “Aging, Cohorts, and the Stability of Sociopolitical Orientations Over the Life Span,” American Journal of Sociology, 97(1), 1991; Yair Ghitza and Andrew Gelman, “The Great Society, Reagan’s Revolution, and Generations of Presidential Voting” [working paper]; Donald R. Kinder, “Politics and the Life Cycle” Science, 312(5782), 2006), making public opinion analysis by cohort valuable. That is what Rouse and Ross provide. They note that while the years that denote generational boundaries may seem arbitrary, a general consensus often forms around politically meaningful generations. The key events and trends the authors identify as shaping Millennials are illustrated on page 29. They include the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the resulting War on Terror, the Great Recession, increasing racial and ethnic diversity, and the rise of digital communications.
After discussing the value of examining Americans born between 1981 and 1997 as a distinct group, and after describing the Millennial persona, the authors use the remainder of the book to provide information about the issues on which Millennials appear to be distinct from older Americans and the issues on which we find important heterogeneity among them. They rely on three original surveys conducted in 2015 and 2016; they also analyze transcripts from focus groups conducted with Millennials in four U.S. cities. Chapters proceed thematically: The Great Recession, education, foreign policy, immigration, climate change, contemporary social issues (gun control, marijuana legalization, abortion), and political engagement.
Each chapter starts with considerable background on its theme. Subsequently, the authors provide descriptive data comparing Millennials and non-Millennials, which they follow with multivariate analyses. One notable finding is that Millennials are more cautious in their economic policy preferences than older Americans. When given an option for a “middle of the road” approach, they are wont to take it, whereas older Americans are more attracted to extremes. Another notable and consistent finding is the degree to which race conditions the effect of being a Millennial, and not just on issues related to diversity. For example, on economic policy, the authors find that younger and older whites differ more in their preferences than do younger and older nonwhites. On many issues, such as government spending, gun control, immigration, and marijuana legalization, one’s racial or ethnic background mattered more than (or enhanced the effect of) being a Millennial. For instance, Millennials overall were more likely than non-Millennials to favor marijuana legalization, but this was particularly true for nonwhites. Additionally, Millennials varied substantially in their attitudes on immigration, with Latinos and self-identified liberals expressing the most welcoming views.
I was surprised that being a Millennial was not, on its own, a consistent factor shaping attitudes about climate change. One of the only significant variables affecting whether Millennials feel that there is solid evidence of climate change was ethnicity, with Latino Millennials more likely than Latino non-Millennials to feel this way. Other subgroup differences were suggestive but not statistically significant. Climate change is one area where Millennials are often touted as being different from older Americans; Rouse and Ross pour some cold water on that conventional wisdom (though they do find that Millennials of many backgrounds are more likely than non-Millennials to think that global warming is caused by human activity). Even more sobering was that Millennials were less likely than non-Millennials to support policies aimed at curbing climate change, such as pursuing alternative energy and taxing pollution. Here, the focus groups were particularly illuminating. They revealed that Millennials are more focused on individual behaviors (such as taking public transportation or shunning plastic bags) than on government action.
Another policy where the authors puncture conventional wisdom is gun control: Millennials were less likely than older Americans to think background checks and waiting periods should be required before one can purchase a gun. And on abortion, generation was not significant. These results are interesting in and of themselves, but they have important implications for how we think of nascent partisan attachments among Millennials. Put simply, people who expect Millennials to become reliably Democratic need to temper that expectation.
I was pleased that the authors complemented their surveys with focus groups. I wish they had made more use of them and offered a clear statement of what we learn from the focus groups that we would not have learned if they had only relied on surveys. I also wish they had conducted focus groups with older Americans. A key virtue of their surveys is the comparisons they allow between younger and older respondents; such comparisons are not possible with the focus groups.
The book will serve as a useful resource for anyone interested in the politics of younger Americans. It will also be valuable to scholars interested in the chapter themes. There are a lot of statistical details to wade through in each chapter; I would like to have had a clean summary table at the end of each thematic chapter summarizing where Millennials differ from non-Millennials, where they do not, and where Millennials differ from one another. The narrative summary of findings in Chapter 10 is helpful, but visual summaries would have been even better.
Like any good book, this one leaves readers with many questions and an eagerness to see what kind of scholarship comes next. For example, to what extent does the Millennial persona shape attitudes on gender, sexuality, and race relations? The authors show us how powerfully race, ethnicity, and ideology can shape whether and how being a Millennial matters, but what about gender and region, or whether people live in urban or rural areas? What questions should we be asking as Generation Z begins to enter the electorate? For anyone deciding to take these questions on, The Politics of Millennials provides an excellent model for how to proceed.
