Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

It is well known that political participation increases with both education and income so that those with higher socio-economic status (SES) have more political voice and influence in the political process.  It is also well known that political participation increases with age until it drops off as people get old and infirm.  Yet little is known about how political inequality interacts with age.   Using American National Election Studies back to 1952, Pew Research Center studies over the past twenty years, and other data-sets, this paper examines how political inequality and age interact in ways that make it especially difficult for poor young people to have their concerns heard.  The paper shows that life-cycle differences in participation matter because young people have distinctive concerns compared to older people.  Young people are more likely to support additional funding for education, efforts to limit climate change, gay marriage and gay rights.  Older people are more likely to support maintaining the status quo for social security and Medicare.   The paper shows that these differences in preferences are especially worrisome when they are the result of life-cycle differences (as appears to be the case for attitudes about education and income support programs) rather than cohort differences (as appears to be the case for attitudes towards gay rights and climate change).  As well as establishing an interaction between age and SES for political participation in the 21^st century, the paper shows that this interaction has changed dramatically over time as the participation of young people has dropped significantly while that of older people has stayed at high levels and been extended to more and more advanced ages.   The paper explores some of the demographic trends such as increasing numbers of minorities and attitudinal trends such as interest in politics that might explain these changes.   It examines whether there is any evidence that political participation via the Internet and social media might ameliorate some of the downward trends for young people.  The paper ends by concluding that we have a political system in which poor people and young people are increasingly disadvantaged in the political process and those who are both poor and young are especially disadvantaged.  As a result, American public policy focuses on programs that help older Americans much than on programs helping younger Americans.  This, in turn, exacerbates the inter-generational transmission of inequality.