August, 1996
Source: NBC Online
By Ayelet Sela / NBC Online
Special to Decision '96
In 1992, young voters were courted by a baby boomer candidate. This attention paid off for Bill Clinton; he won 44 percent of their vote compared to 33 percent for George Bush. For many of them this first experience with a presidential election inspired them to activism. But four years later, much of Generation X (often defined as the 46 million people born between 1961-81) has vanished from the political landscape.
What happened? Is Generation X being ignored by Washington or has this generation withdrawn itself from politics?
"There is a reason why they shouldn't be catering to the youth vote," said Nate Persily, one of the law students who participated in the Stanford Rountable. "Youth, people in the under-35 age group, first of all, are less registered. They're not the people who decide primary elections. They've almost never had an impact in general elections. So, I mean, it makes a lot of sense that if they are going to target their message it will be to people older than we are."
In 1992, the U.S. Census Bureau reported a 42-percent turnout for 18- to 24-year-olds, compared to 61 percent for the general population. An MTV poll reports only 19 percent of this generation consider themselves politically involved. Meanwhile, the Libertarian Party claims that 40 percent of its new members in 1995 were people in their twenties.
Is the pattern of low-voter turnout and anti-government sentiment because these young adults are at a certain stage of life - a coming of age - or is there something different about this generation that sets it apart?
Daniel J. Levinson, in his book "The Seasons of a Woman's Life," says that young adults are in the process of building and maintaining their first "adult structures." Levinson describes this as the time of leaving the parental home, getting married, graduating or making a geographical move, entering the workforce. According to Levinson, Gen-Xers are preoccupied with separating from the world of their childhood, while not yet connecting to the public world.
The childhood Gen-Xers are leaving behind was marked by several major social trends. Raised in the decades when divorce tripled, more women worked outside the home and the number of illegitimate births rose from 10 to 30 percent, many Gen-Xers grew up as latchkey kids.
While the numbers indicate that Gen-Xers grew up in a less stable environment, they were also exposed to a more diverse culture, with more flexible sex roles and a broader global outlook than previous generations.
Since childhood, Gen-Xers' economic anxiety has grown: They watched their parents lose jobs through "corporate downsizing" while their own college tuition skyrocketed. These days, non-college graduates earn little more than minimum wage at dead-end "McJobs," or find most opportunities are in "temp" work or contract employment. As well, standard-of-living raises are no longer guaranteed. It is no wonder that 75 percent of Gen-Xers think they will be worse off financially than their parents.
Financial success, for many Gen-Xers, is directly tied to technology. Many of them grew up playing video games and doing their homework on the first personal computers, and now computers are central to their careers. So, today, when government regulations are proposed to protect the baby boomer's children (the Echo Generation, born since 1980) from pornography online and violence on television, young adults - the largest segment of Internet users - fear that the result will be censorship of their freedom of speech. And Gen-Xers are far outnumbered by baby boomer families.
If big business was perceived as the enemy by baby boomers in their youth, Gen-Xers are more likely to protest big government. They fear that government entitlement programs, specifically Social Security, will not exist when they retire. In 1940, there were 40 workers contributing to Social Security for every retiree. Today, there are 3.3 workers per retiree. When the baby boomers retire, the worker-to-retiree ratio will have dropped to 2-1. How will Gen-Xers ever be able to retire?
Third Millennium, a non-partisan youth advocacy organization, found that only 28 percent of young adults believe that Social Security will exist by the time they retire, compared to 46 percent who believe in UFO's. It's not surprising, then, that many Gen-Xers consider government intervention - from paying higher taxes to federal regulation of the private sector - dangerous to their long-term economic survival.
What will draw Generation X back into the political debate? Will it be the economy? Social Security reform? Censorship issues? Concern for the environment? Perhaps it will be the feeling each generation has that they can fundamentally change American politics.
"We've got bigger problems than we've ever had and fewer resources to deal with them. That's the bad news," said Rob Nelson, another Stanford Roundtable participant and law school student. "The good news is that it's an incredible opportunity for individuals in the political establishment to address those issues and try and create some synergy towards solving some of those problems with us."
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